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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



/ 



http://www.archive.org/details/greatstreetsofwoOOdavi 



THE GREAT STREETS 



OF 



THE WORLD 












y 




BROADWAY-THE TWENTY-THIRD STREET CROSS1SU. 



THE GREAT STREETS 



OF 



THE WORLD 



RICHARD HARDING DAVIS W. W. STORY 

ANDREW LANG HENRY JAMES 

FRANCISQUE SARCEY PAUL LINDAU 

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD 

ILLUSTRATED BY 

A. B. FROST ETTORE TITO 

W. DOUGLAS ALMOND ALEXANDER ZEZZOS 

G. JEANNIOT F. STAHL 

ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN 



• cOPYR/s^ 

OCT 28 1892 
NEW YORK , Bai o> 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
1892 






1^2 



Copyright, 1S92, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AMD BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



BROADWAY. By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS, . . i 
Illustrated by A. B. FROST. 

PICCADILLY. By ANDREW LANG 37 

Illustrated by IV. DOUGLAS ALMOND. 

BOULEVARDS OF PARIS. By FRANCISQUE SARCEY, . 69 
Illustrated by G. JEANNIOT. 

THE CORSO OF ROME. By IV. IV. STORY. . . . 109 
Illustrated by ETTORE TITO. 

THE GRAND CANAL. By HENRY JAMES. . . .141 
Illustrated by ALEXANDER ZEZZOS. 

UNTER DEN LINDEN. By PAUL LINDAU. . . . 173 
Illustrated by T. STAHL. 

THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT. By ISABEL F. HAP GOOD, .211 
III 11 J rated by ILYA EFIMOVITCH REPIN. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Broadway — The Twenty-third Street Crossing, 



Frontispiece 



.Near the Post Office — Early Morning, ..... 2 
The Sandwich Man, ......... 4 

Hot Roasted Chestnuts, .5 

Below Trinity Church — p.^5 a.m., ...... 7 

Broadway at the Bowling Green, . . . . . .10 

'"Fire!" 15 

Recreation, . . . . . . . . . .18 

Looking Up Broadway — near Grace Church, . . . 19 

The Pleasures of Shopping, ....... 20 

In the Retail District — Broadway, between Seventeenth and 

Twenty-third Streets, . . . . . . .21 

" The Rialto " — Broadway and Fourteenth Street, . . .22 
"Evening Papers" ......... 27 

" }'i siting States/lieu" — /;/ Front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, 

during a Political Convention, . . . . 29 

The Metropolitan Opera House at Night, Broadway and Thirty- 
ninth Street, . . 31 



x List of Illustrations 



PAGE 



" Something the Matter"— Near the Lincoln Statue, Union 

Square, 34 

Coachmen, ....■••■•■• 3° 

A Chat in Piccadilly, 3 8 

Statue of the Duke of Wellington— Hyde Park, . . . 4 1 

A Morning Walk— Piccadilly, . 44 

"Sandwich men in their prison of wood," 46 

" The Piccadilly Goat" 4§ 

Leaving St. James's Hall — Afternoon, 5 l 

A Gatezaay of the Royal Academy, Burlington House, . -53 
The Burlington Arcade, Piccadilly — Afternoon, . . -57 
" The Horse Guards Trampling by," . . . . .61 

" Small Boys, Screaming Out ' Winner .'"' . . . .63 

"At night, in the season, it is a sight to see the long line of 

carriages, orderly arrayed, waiting" . . . .64 

" The country visitors arc gaping at the shops," . . . 67 
A Boulevardicr — English Type, ...... 70 

Boulevard des Lt aliens — A Thorough Parisienne, . . -73 
Tzvo Types, .......... 75 

The Boulevard at the Bastille, . . . . . . -77 

The Boulevard at 6 a.m., ........ 79 

Boulevard Bcaumarchais — An Actress, . . . . .81 

A Type of Journalist, . 83 

Boidevard St. Martin, 85 

Neiusboys on the Boulevard des Capucines, . . . -87 



List of Illustrations 



XI 



Le Carrcfour des Ecrdse's, 

Sunday, on the Boulevard du Temple, 

Before the Cafe Riche, .... 

In Front of the Theatre des Varietc's — between 

The Flower-sellers, ..... 

The Busiest Part of the Corso, . 

Entrance of the Palazzo Sciarra, 

The Little Flower-girl, .... 

Tramontana — The Cold Wind of Rome, . 

The King's Guardsman, .... 



the acts, 



del Popolo. 



A Book-stall on the Corso, 

State Carriage of the Queen of Italy, 

A Procession of Seminarists, . 

Morning on the Corso, 

Piazza del Popolo, at the Entrance to the Corso, 

Loungers on the Steps of the Church of Sta. Maria 

Piazza Colonna, along the Corso, 

A Boy Flower-seller, 

The Grand Canal from a Terrace, 

Entrance of the Grand Canal, . 

A Girl of the People, . 

Ganzer — A Retired Boatman who Assists Gondolas at Land- 
ing-places, 

An Old Venetian Boat Richly Decked with Silhs and Satins, 
and Roivcd by Gondoliers Dressed in the Ancient Fashion, 



89 
92 

94 
101 
1 10 

"3 
114 
117 
119 
121 
125 
126 
129 
130 
132 

134 
136 
140 
142 

145 
146 

1 48 



Xll 



List of Illustrations 



Regatta Day on the Grand Canal, . 
Dinner-time — Type of Gondolier, 
Traghetto — A Passagczvay of the Grand Canal, 
A Temporary Bridge Across the Canal of the Rcdt 
dentorc), ...... 

Fishmongers, ....... 

The Bridge of the Rial to, ..... 

Vapor etto — Small Passenger Steamer on the Grand 
A Moonlight Serenade — At the Rial to Bridge, 
A Messenger, H 

" Unter den Linden" 
The Kaiser, Unter den Linden, . 
Swans in an A rm of the Spree, 
A Pillar for Advertisements, . 
The Toy-shop Window — A Sunday Afternoon 
At the Entrance of the Passage, 
The Latest News, 
On the Bourse, . 
Nurses from the Spreewald, 
Hot Sausages ! . 
Mounted Policeman, . 
A Vendor, .... 

Teamsters on the Quay, 

A Fish-shop, 

The Corner of the Central Hall in the Gostinny Dvor, 



Canal, 



Scene. 



(Re 



155 
157 

'59 

162 
165 
166 
169 

•J' 
174 
^77 
180 
185 
187 
188 
192 

I9S 
200 
204 
209 
210 
212 
219 
220 
224 



List of Illustrations 



Xlll 



Buying C/iristinas-trccs, . 
Arklidngel Fishermen at the Market 
The Restaurant Dominique, 
Belozo Zero — A Fire in the Snow, 
The A'e'vsky Prospe'kt in Winter, 
The Katherine Canal, 
Sledge-road on the Frozen Nevd, 
The Emperor of Russia Blessing the }} 
Epiphany, .... 



aters of the Nl 



I'd at 



227 
229 
232 
236 

239 
242 

247 
249 



BROADWAY 

By Richard Harding Davis 

THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. B. FROST 



-■>•- 




NEAR THE POST-OFFIOB-EAELT MOKNING. 



BROADWAY 




i ROADWAY means so many different things to so rnany 
different people. The business man has his own idea 
of it, and it suggests something cpvite the contrary to 
his wife, and still another point of view to his son; 
in this it differs from almost every other great thor- 
oughfare of the world. 

When one reads of the Appian Way, one thinks 
only of magnificent distances and marble. The Rue 
St. Antoine brings up a picture of barricades and gutters 
splashecl with blood ; and the Boulevards are reminiscent of 
kiosks and round marble-top tables under striped awnings. 
But all Broadway is divided into three parts, and which is the 
greatest of these, it would be difficult to say. There is the busi- 
ness portion of Broadway, and the shopping district, and still 
farther uptown the Broadway where Xew Yorkers and their coun- 
try cousins once used to walk to look at the passers-by, and where 
now only those walk who wish to be looked at. And yet Broad- 
way has, from the Battery to 159th Street, where the cobble-stones 
break up into a dust}- country road, its own dear individuality. 
It may take on the color of its surroundings from jDoint to point, 
just as the same column of mercury passes through zero and 
freezing-point to fever heat ; the clerks who board the surface cars 



Broadway 



at the Equitable Building make room for the shoppers at Union 
Square, and they, in turn, empty the car to give place to those who 
live still farther uptown; but it is the same familiar yellow ear 

which carries each of them, 
and which runs on all the 
way. 

The business man knows 
Broadway as a street blocked 
with moving drays and wag- 
ons, with pavements which 
move with unbroken lines of 
men, and that are shut in on 
either side by the tallest of 
tall buildings. It is a place 
where no one strolls, and 
where a man can as easily 
swing his cane as a woman 
could wear a train. Pedes- 
trians do not walk steadily 
forward here, or in a straight line, but dodge in and out like run- 
ners on a foot-ball field. They all seem to be trying to reach the 
bank to have a check cashed before three o'clock. The man who 
stops to speak to a friend, or to gaze into a shop window, is jostled 
and pushed and shouldered to one side ; everyone seems to be 
tiying to catch up to the man just in front of him ; and everyone 
has something to do, and something on his mind to think of, too, if 
his face tells anything. 

So intent are they on their errands that they would not recog- 
nize their own wives if they passed them by. This is the spot on 
Broadway where the thermometer marks fever heat. It is the great 
fighting-ground of the city, where the battle of business goes on 
from eight o'clock in the morning until three in the afternoon, at 
which time the work flags a little and grows less and less hurried 




THE SANDWICH MAN. 



Broadway 



until five, when the armies declare an armistice for the day and 
march off uptown to plan a fresh campaign for the morrow. The 
armies begin to arrive before eight, and gather from every point of 
the compass. The ferry-boats land them by thousands, and hurry 
back across the river for thousands more ; the elevated roads mar- 
shal them from far uptown, gathering them by companies at each 
station, where they are unloaded and scattered over the business 
districts in regiments. They come over the Brooklyn Bridge by 
tens of thousands, in one long, endless procession, and cross the 
City Hall Park at a quick step. It is one of the most impressive 
sights the city has to offer. The gathering of the clans was less 
impressive and less momentous. They do not all meet on Broad- 
way at once, but before the 
business day is over they will 
have passed up or down it, 
and will have contributed at 
one time to the hurrying 
crowds on its two pavements. 
Where they all find work is a 
wonder to the dilettante from 
upper Broadway, where mon- 
ey is spent, not made. But he 
will understand when he no- 
tices that every building along 
the street is divided and sub- 
divided like a beehive, and 
every room holds its own 
president and board of trus- 
tees. It would take an idle 
man half an hour to read the signs on the front of one block of 
lower Broadway, and the face of each building is a small directory. 

There was a great trade parade in the city two years ago, and 
it gave New Yorkers a pleasing idea of their prosjDerity ; but its 




HOT ROASTED CHESTNUT3. 



6 Broadway 

theatrical display and bauds of music were but a pageant to the 
grim reality of the great trade parade which forces its way up and 
dowu Broadway every morning in the year. There is a narrow 
turn in Cheapside, of which Londoners boast that the traffic is 
so great as to block the street for half an hour at a time ; but on 
Broadway, for a mile, there are over four long lines of drays and 
wagons, with the tongue of the one behind touching the back-board 
of the one in front. That is the trade parade with which New 
Yorkers are too familiar to fully appreciate. It represents, in its 
loads and burdens, every industry and product of the world. Carts 
loaded with boxes of unmade clothing lock wheels with drays carry- 
ing unmade food, and the express wagons, with their precious loads 
of silver bullion, are crowded by drays canying great haunches of 
raw meat to the transatlantic steamers lying off the Battery. These 
are the ammunition trains of the great army of workers. 

The business men of lower Broadway go down town every morn- 
ing, and walk back every afternoon in good weather and in bad 
weather, in sickness and in health, until they grow rich. Then 
they employ other men to work for them, but they still go down 
town through force of habit, perhaps, or because they have accumu- 
lated everything excejjt the knowledge of how to rest, and how to 
spend a holiday. For eight hours of every day they are impris- 
oned in the business district, chained before roller-top desks, or 
bound down in the arms of swivel-chairs, or over ledgers which are 
always marked " to be continued," and which have no finis. At six 
o'clock, after they have given the best part of their day's strength 
and brain and energy to business, they are set at liberty and are 
allowed to run up town overnight, on their promise to return again, 
and are given three hours in which to become acquainted with 
their children. And some of them keep this up until they are 
gray-haired, feeble old men. They begin when they are quite 
young ; when they are of the age to think that it is something im- 
portant and desirable to work down town, and as office-boys earn- 




BELOW TRINITY CHURCH— 9.45 A.M. 



Broadway 9 

ing three dollars a week in their father's office, look down upon 
their elder brother at college, and patronize the family at dinner, 
and talk of " our firm," and what " we " intend to do if wheat 
should drop much further. As clerks, their horizon is bounded by 
future raise in salary, and then- life is filled with hopes that the 
man just above them will die, and allow them to step into his 
place ; as partners in the firm they speak, after hours, of every 
other subject but that of business, and declare bitterly that, what- 
ever pursuit their sons may enter into, it shall not be the same as 
theirs, of that they are cpiite certain. And at last, when they grow 
rich enough to retire, they do nothing of the sort, but still haunt 
their place of business, and delight in telling struggling young men 
how they once used to sweep out the office of which they are now 
the owners. That is the atmosphere of lower Broadway. A place 
where half the men do what they are told to do, like accomplished 
machines, for so much a week, and ever with the conviction that so 
much is not enough ; and where the other half are for so many 
hours a day heads with superfluous bodies, with brains working one 
against the other, anil with the same effect in the end as when cog- 
wheels of a watch work one against the other, they make the watch go. 
Broadway proper begins at Bowling Green. This is the open 
breathing-place where the street rests before it narrows down and 
meets the fierce turmoil of the business portion just above. It is a 
very cosmopolitan Broadway at this point, and every house facing 
it seems to welcome and bid for the arriving immigrants. The 
offices of the foreign consuls are here, and the immigrants' board- 
ing-houses, with their signs in almost every strange language, and 
the shops where shillings and francs and guelders can be changed 
into dollars. Men in sabots and spangled with silver buttons, and 
women with Neapolitan head-dresses, are too common about Bow- 
ling Green for anyone to look twice at them, and sailors, and ship- 
stewards on shore for fresh provisions, and petty officers with a few 
hours' leave in which to get rid of their money, give this end of 



10 



Broadway 







^am®£> 



BROADWAY AT THE BOWLING GREEN. 



Broadway a distinctly salty and foreign air. This is where you are 
stopped at every second step by too familiar young men of Hebraic 
features, who act as runners for the great transatlantic lines, who 



Broadway n 

aggrieve your amour propre by offering you a steerage passage to 
the old country for twenty dollars, and who are as persistent as 
those who have rendered the ready-made clothing stores of Baxter 
Street notorious. 

The lodging-house " shark " and the bunco-steerer lie in wait 
about here for the immigrant, and the more daring rogue who, 
dressed like an immigrant, tells you how he has been robbed on 
his arrival, and who wishes to sell you his watch, an old family 
heirloom made in Munich ; and who is not the least abashed when 
you pry open the case and read "Toledo, O.," on the back. 

These are the weeds and parasites that grow in Castle Garden. 

It is only a few steps farther up town from this, and you are in 
the rush of the business district, and are dodging past men who are 
talking per cents and discounts on their way to luncheon. The 
cross-streets are traps and pitfalls here, and you have to watch your 
chances to cross, and to measure your distances as carefully and as 
quickly as a rider does a water-jump. This part of Broadway is a 
valley of great buildings, and from a boat on the North River one 
can trace the march of the street by these mountains of brick and 
iron and plate-glass. They rise up above the rest of the city like 
shot-towers, and you see nothing uptown to equal them, save the 
white points of the Cathedral, and the slim, graceful spire of Grace 
Church half-way between. 

The rush is greatest about the base of one of the tallest of these 
— the Equitable Building, that great gray pile which every good 
stranger must visit on his first day hi New York, and from the 
dome of which the signal flags flutter out their proclamation of 
cold, clear weather, in haughty defiance of the fact that the bunting 
itself is heavy with moist, unending rain. 

Just below this, only a block to the south, is one of those 
strange contrasts which seem as if they could not have been acci- 
dental. This is where old Trinity Church, with its graveyard, 
blocks the way of Wall Street. There is no stronger contrast than 



12 Broadway 

this ill the whole city of New York. 'Whether you look up Wall 
Street's short length to the church, or from the church steps down 
Wall Street to where the pillars of the Custom-House seem to shut 
off its other eud, the effect is the same. There is something so sol- 
emnly incongruous in the mournful peace of the graveyard, with the 
roar of the street in front of it, in the cherubs' heads and the gaunt 
skull and cross-bones of the monuments, in the implements of war 
and of naval battles that date from the seventeen hundreds up to 
the days of Captain Paid Jones. The tower of the church throws its 
shadow directly into Wall Street, the street that seems to rim with 
gold, and every hour its chimes ring out above the noise of the tickers, 
and every minute of the day its doors are open, as if to leave no ex- 
cuse for those who do not snatch a moment to step beyond them 

" Every square foot of that graveyard," philosophized a young 
broker, so tradition says, " could be sold for more than half the 
men on the street are worth, and yet the tenants are not getting 
any use of their money. It doesn't seem right, does it '? " But it 
does seem right to the old-fashioned nobody who sees something- 
more than accident in this waste of valuable building ground ; who 
fancies that this quiet acre of land is meant to teach a lesson which 
those who run after the great dollar might read, if they only have 
the time ; but they haven't the time — banking hours are so few. 
I never pass Wall Street but I am filled with wonder that it should 
be such a narrow, insignificant street. One would think it would 
need more room for all that goes on there, and it is almost a sur- 
prise that there is no visible sign of the f oi'tunes rising and fall- 
ing, and of the great manoeuvres and attacks which emanate in that 
two hundred yards, and which are felt from Turkey to Oregon. 
But it seems just like any other street, except for the wires which 
almost roof it over, and that the men one meets in it are different 
in mien and manner from those one meets in upper Broadway ; 
they wear a sharp, nervous look, and they stoop, as if they had 
grown so from bending so often and so intently over the momentous 



Broadway is 

strips of paper tape. It is rather interesting to think that the man 
who brushed past you may have been but a few years back one of 
the uniformed boys who run with cable despatches to the floor 
of the Exchange, and that he may in a few weeks' time be looking- 
for a clerkship in one of the banks which he did not succeed in 
breaking. The broad statue of "Washington, with its shining knees 
and dusty coat, always seems to be in the most incongruous position 
here. "Unless it is that he is guarding the Sub-Treasury behind 
him, and that his uplifted hand is meant to say to the bulls and 
bears: so far can you go, and no farther. It is a most suggestive 
place, is Wall Street, and one feels more easy when one gets out of 
it into Broadway again, where mobs of men have not swept up and 
down howling and with white faces, and where Black Fridays make 
no visible sign. And after you get out of Wall Street, it is worth 
while to step across into Trinity Church and note how far away the 
street seems, and how calndy grand the chvu'ch is, with its high pil- 
lars meeting the great arches, and with the sun- stealing through the 
gorgeous window at the west. It is almost like the cathedral of 
some sunny, sleepy, English town, and you are not brought home 
again until another sight-seer like yourself opens the screen doors, 
and you can hear the shrill whistle of the car-driver just outside, 
and his ejaculations on the head of the gentleman on the box-seat 
of the ice-cart, who will not give him the track. The business man 
comes in here occasionally to show the interior to his customer 
from out of town. He wears the preoccupied and slightly bored 
air of the amateur guide who has seen it before, and as he is going 
out again immediately, he does not throw away his cigar, but 
keeps it decorously hidden inside his hat. From Trinity Church 
he will go to the Equitable Building, to show off the marbles and 
elevators, and from there to all the other show-places of the city, 
from Cleopatra's Needle in the afternoon, to the Spanish dancer at 
night. Trinity Church has a mob of its own about it once a year, 
but it is a somewhat different mob from the feverish gatherings of 



u Broadway 

Wall Street. This is on the last night of the old year, when the citi- 
zens gather, as they have gathered since the days of Aaron Burr, t< > 
hear the chimes welcome the coming, and toll for the king who is 
dead, and sound a " Long live the king ! " to his successor. 

Broadway widens in front of the Astor House, and gives the 
cars from all over the city a little room in which to turn before they 
start off uptown again. The Post-Office shuts it off at one side, and 
receives half the pedestrians from the street through its swinging 
doors, to shoot them out once more after it has swallowed up the 
contributions they have made to one of its hungry maws. It is not 
an impressive-looking building, in spite of its great, clumsy, barn- 
like bulk, and it looks still more utilitarian from the other side, 
where the City Hall faces it over the trees of the Park. The City 
Hall is perhaps as correct, or one of the most correct, pieces of 
architecture in the city of New York ; it is simple, direct, and grace- 
ful, with the quiet dignity, in the balance of its two wings, of a 
Colonial mansion. Every known, and hitherto unknown, order of 
architecture surrounds it on the border of the Park, and not one of 
these many specimens robs it of its place in the centre of the stage, 
which it has held since those days when its southern extension 
was backed with brown stone because no one, so it was expected, 
would ever live south of it, and it would never be seen. 

The City Hall Park makes a pleasant break in Broadway. It 
opens it up on one side and lets in a breath of fresh air where it 
breaks one of the long, high barriers of business houses. The peo- 
ple who haunt and who inhabit the Park have nothing in common 
with the wage -earners and money-makers who rush throiigh it and 
about its four sides. They are the real leisure class of New York, 
and their only duty and pastime is to sit under the trees on the cir- 
cle of benches and read three-days'-old newspapers, which were 
once wrapped round the luncheons of the despised wage-earner. 
You will see the same men on the same benches day after day, and 
month after month. Their garments grow more dirty and their 



Broadway 



15 



chins more dark, until one day they disappear altogether — the police 
court and the coroner only can tell where. They are tramps, with 
the mud of country roads still heavy on their boots ; strangers 
stranded in the streets, 
without money and with- 
out hope, and young 
toughs from the cheap 
1< »dging - houses on t h e 
Bowery, waiting to pick up 
a new tool in some recent 
arrival from the farms of 
New Jersey and Connecti- 
cut. They will rind him a 
trifle dazed by the rush 
and noise, resting here be- 
cause there are trees about, 
before he' starts in on that 
disheartening occupation 

"FIRE!" 

known as looking for 

work." He sits with his valise tightly squeezed between his knees, 
and with one hand touching the small roll of money sewed up in 
the pocket of his waistcoat. In a few days he will make his first 
entrance into a pawnshop on the Bowery, and the home-made 
clothes will go, and his silver watch, and finally the empty valise 
itself, and he will leave the shop for the last time with a hopelessly 
lost feeling, and no impediments but the clothes he stands in. 
Then, when he returns to the City Hall Park, he is ripe to listen to 
the hints of the hard-looking young man on the bench next him, 
and before evening he will be one of a crowd which "hold up" a 
drunken sailor for his money, and an officer will have his hand on 
his shoulder, while his friends of the morning scamper off, dodging 
the light of the lamp-posts, until they disappear finally in the dark- 
ness of the side-streets. 




^*Ht. 



16 



Broadway 



The Park is the rendezvous for many of the "Andies" and 
" Barneys " of local politics, with the inevitable cigar and the habit 
of emphasizing their remarks with the end of the right finger, and 
the interrogative "see." They are waiting to buttonhole this or 
that employee in one of the city departments who has a " pull ; " 
and there are numerous Italian wedding parties who find it more 
distinguished and much more cheap to be married by the Mayor, 
and who are gay in purple and green ribbons, and are happily un- 
conscious of how evident is the purpose of then- visit. 

But it is at night that the Park is at its best. When the win- 
dows of the Post-Office are blazing with light, and the mail wagons 
rattle up over the empty streets with a great to do and unload their 
freight of trouble and good news where it may be scattered broad- 
cast over the world. On warm nights the marble steps of the City 
Hall are black with people from the slums, and every bench holds 
four drowsy figures ; there is hardly room for the compositors and 
pressmen who have run across from Newspaper Bow for a breath < if 
air between shifts, and the Park policeman is kept constantly busy 
rapping the feet of the sleepers in the city's free lodging-place. 

Newspaper Bow bounds the eastern side of the scpiare with the 
workshops of the great dailies. They rise, one above the other, in 
the humorous hope that the public will believe the length of their 
subscription-lists is in proportion to the height of their towers. 
They are aggressively active and wide-awake in the sdence of the 
night about them. The lights from the hundreds of windows glow 
like furnaces, and the quick and impatient beating of the groaning 
presses sounds like the roar of the sea. " There she is — the great 
engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in every quar- 
ter of the world, her couriers on every road. Her officers march 
along with armies, and her envoys enter into the statesmen's cabi- 
net." But the ambassadors she sends to the courts to-day are a 
very different sort of ambassadors from those of whom Mr. War- 
rington spoke, and they are probably not quite so useful. 



Broadway 17 

From the City Hall on up Broadway to Tenth Street the com- 
plexion of the street is utterly changed, and there is nothing but 
wholesale business houses, almost all with strange foreign names. 
This is where Broadway nods a little. There is none of the rush of 
lower Broadway, and none of its earnestness. The big houses deal 
only with firms, and not with individuals. Their windows show 
straw bonnets when the retail stores up town are tilled with Christ- 
mas presents, and in summer their stock in trade points out what 
the fall overcoat will be like, and how furs will be fashioned. The 
proprietors stand in the doorways, or gaze nut of the windows, with 
their customers from the country at their elbows, watching the pass- 
ing crowd. Three sales a day is good business in one of these 
houses, and means thousands of dollars. Broadway takes a dip, 
geographically, from the City Hall to Canal Street, where those tire- 
some individuals who knew New York when Union Square was a 
forest, fished in the stream that gave the street its name, or saythey^ 
did. It rises again until it reaches Tenth Street, where it turns 
sharply west. From the City Hall one can see the tops of all tlie 
horse-cars as they go down ami rise again, and the street itself looks 
as though it stopped altogether at Tenth Street, blocked by Grace 
Church. There were, no doubt, excellent reasons for placing Grace 
Church just where it is; but if it had been placed at the joint of 
Broadway for no other than the architectural effect, there would 
have been reason enough. There is no place where it could have 
been seen so well. It seems to join the two angles of the street 
and prit a punctuation mark to the business quarter. From its cor- 
ner in the angle of the L it is conspicuous from either approach, 
and it silently educates and teaches everyone who passes, some- 
thing of what is best in architecture. 

The shopping district begins about Tenth Street, and is bounded 
on the north by the latitude of Twenty-third, where the promenade 
begins, and continues on up indefinitely to Forty-second Street. 
One is as likely to see a man here as at an afternoon tea, and if one 




is Broadway 

should dare to venture in, it is only for one of two reasons : either 
he is the husband or brother of some wife or sister in the suburbs, 
who lias asked him to run uptown at luncheon-time and match some- 
thing for her, or he is there because the women are there, and he 
has come to look at them. In the first place he is entitled to your 
pity, and in the second place as well, for his occupation, though in- 
dividually satisfactory, is not 
profitable. The business dis- 
trict is very grim and very real, 
the shopping district is all color 
and movement and variety. It 
is not the individual woman 
k » ^ ! rf'Jed one sees here, but woman in 

the plural. You may have a 
glance of a beautiful face, or of 
a brilliant or an outrageously 
inappropriate gown, but it is 
only a glimpse, and the face is 
lost in a composite photograph 
of faces, the expression of which seems to be one of decided anxiety. 
For it is apparently a very serious business, this shopping. The 
shoppers do not seem to be altogether happy, for they have heard, 
perhaps, of a place where you can get that same lace flounce for two 
cents a yard less than at the other place, where yon got the last lot, 
and they are pressing on before it is all gone. They are as keen 
over their bargains in trimmings and gloves as their husbands down 
town are over the rise and fall in oil, and they certainly do not look 
as if they were on pleasure bent. On the contrary, they seem to 
have much upon their minds. On a sunny, bright morning, when it 
is possible for them to wear their best bravery without fear of rain, 
Broadway holds, apparently, every woman of means in the city. 
Who stays at home to take care of the baby, and who looks after the 
flat ? is a question. I use the word flat advisedly, because all the 




KBCKEATIOK. 



m 




7 




LOOKING IT BROADWAT— NEAR GHACE CHURCH. 



20 



Broadway 



women who shop below Union Square and along Fourteenth Street 
live in flats. Above Union Square they occupy apartments. It is a 
very fine distinction. The ladies who live in flats generally come 

down town in the " elevated,'' 
and dress a great deal ; they 
make an event of it, and 
take their luncheons, which 
consist of a meringue and 
an ice, down town. They 
think nothing of walking 
three hours at a time over 
hard floors, or remaining on 
their feet before long coun- 
ters, but it would weary 
them, you would find, to 
walk the children to the 
Park and back again — be- 
sides, that would be so un- 
profitable. There is an ob- 
ject in going down town to 
shop ; the object sometimes 
costs as much as fifty cents, and 3-ou get a fan with it, or a balloon, 
or a little pasteboard box to cany it in. It is a remarkably dressed 
procession, and noticeable in the youthfulness of the attire of those 
who are somewhat too elderly to stand artificial violets in their bon- 
nets, and those who are much too young to wear their hair up. 
There is much jewelry, and doubtful jewelry at that, below Union 
Square, and a tendency to many silver bangles, and shoulder-capes, 
and jingling chatelaines. 

Union Square makes a second break in Broadway, and is a very 
different lounging-place indeed from City Hall Park. It is much 
more popular, as one can see by the multitude of nurse-maids and 
children, and in the number and cared-for beauty of the plants and 




THE PLEASURES OF SHOPPING. 




IN THE EETAIL DISTRICT. 

Broadway, between Seventeenth and Twenty-third Streets. 



22 



Broadway 



flowers, and in the general air of easy geniality of the park police- 
men, who wear white cotton gloves. They have to get along without 
gloves about the City Hall. Horace Greeley and Benjamin Frank- 
lin are the appropriate guardians of that busy lower park, while the 
graceful Lafaj'ette and the stately equestrian figure of Washington 
are the presiding figures of this gayer and more metropolitan 




" THE KIAI.TO. 

Broadway and Fourteenth Street. 



pleasure-ground. Union Square is bounded on the south by that 
famous strip of pavement known to New Yorkers who read the 
papers as the Eialto. This is the promenade of actors, but a very 
different class indeed from the polished gentlemen who brighten 
upper Broadway. They are just as aggressively conspicuous, but 
less beautiful, and they are engaged in waiting for something to 
turn up. They have just returned from a tour which opened and 
closed at Yonkers, and they cannot tell why. They have come 
back "to reorganize," as they express it, and to start afresh next 



Broadway 23 

week with another manager, and greater hopes. They live chiefly 
on hope. It is said it is possible to cast, in one morning, any one 
of Shakespeare's plays, to equip any number of farce companies, 
and to "organize" three Uncle Tom's Cabin combinations, 
with even more than the usual number of Marks the lawyer, 
from this melancholy market of talent that ranges about the 
theatrical agencies and costumers' shops and bar-rooms of lower 
Union Square. The Broadway side of Union Square is its richest 
and most picturesque. The great jewelry and silver-shops begin 
here, and private carriages line the curb in quadruple lines, and 
the pavement is impressively studded with white-breeched grooms. 
Long-haired violinists and bespectacled young women in louse 
gowns, with rolls of music in their hands, become conspicuous just 
above this — the music-shops are responsible for them. And from 
this on up Broadway from Union Square the richer and more fash- 
ionable element shows itself, and predominates altogether. These 
shoppers come in carriages, and hold long lists between gloved 
ringers, and spend less time at the bargain counters. The crowd is 
not so great, and the dressing is much richer, and as well worth 
looking it as that of any city in the world. These shoppers are 
not so hurried either, they walk more leisurely, and stop at every 
candy store ; and windows tilled with photographs of American 
duchesses and English burlesque actresses are like barriers in their 
path. They are able to observe in passing how- every other woman 
is dressed, and at the same time to approve their own perfection 
in any plate-glass window with a sufficiently dark background to 
throw a reflection. 

This is the part of Broadway where one should walk just before 
the Christmas holidays, if one wants to see it at its very best ; when 
the windows otter richer and costlier bids to those of better taste 
than at any other season ; and when the women whom one passes 
have a thoroughbred air of comfort and home about them, and do 



24 Broadway 

not look as though they were altogether dependent on the street 
and shops for their entertainment. Those you meet farther up look 
as though they regarded Broadway not as a straight line between 
two points, not as a thoroughfare, hut as a promenade. But iu the 
lower part there are groups of distinguished-looking women and 
beautiful girls with buuehes of flowers at their waists, and a certain 
affectation of mamiishness in their dress that only makes their faces 
more feminine by contrast. "They carry themselves well," would 
be the first criticism of a stranger, and they have a frank look of in- 
terest in what is going on about them which could even be mis- 
taken for boldness, but which really tends to show how certain of 
themselves they are. 

At Twenty-third Street the more business-like Broadway takes 
on the leisurely air of the avenue, which it crosses, and in which it 
is merged for a block or two. The rush is greatest here, and han- 
soms and democratic street-cars and lumbering busses with their 
roof-gardens of pretty girls, and victorias, in which the owners look 
down upon the pedestrians as if a bit conscious of their high estate, 
are forced into each other's company as closely as are the carts and 
drays farther down town. This is where quiet home-bodies of the 
lower half of the avenue, and the other daughters of the few hun- 
dred from above, make a dash across the forbidden ground of Broad- 
way and pass on to the more secure footing of the avenue, as calmly 
unconscious of the Broadway habitue who begins to prowl just here, 
as though he were one of the hotel pillars against which he poses. 
This is the most interesting spot in the city to the stranger within 
our gates, and it is, after all, the Broadway that we all know and 
like the best. It is so cosmopolitan, so alive, and so rich in 
color and movement, and so generous in its array of celebrities. 
One could wear a turban here, or a pith helmet, or a sealskin 
ulster down to his heels, and his passing would cause no comment. 
For everyone who visits New York, whether he be a Japanese 
prince, or a' political exile from Erin, or the latest imported Lou- 



Broadway 25 

don pickpocket, finds his way sooner or later to this promenade 
of the tenderloin district of Broadway. Here you will meet face to 
face in their proper persons the young women whose photographs 
smile upon them in somewhat erratic attire from the shop-windows, 
which one would think might prove embarrassing ; and the leading- 
juveniles of the stock companies, well gloved and groomed, and with 
a conscious effort to look unconscious ; and the staid British tourist, 
with the determined air of one who wishes it understood that though 
he is in the parade he is not of it ; and richly dressed, well-fed 
sporting men, with cheeks tanned by the wind and sim of the race- 
tracks ; and white-faced gamblers, with expressionless eyes, which 
tell of late hours and gas-light and close air, and which seem to 
blink in the sun, as if it hurt them. There are soubrettes, with 
sin at curly hair, given to loud and unexpected explosions of mirth. 
Very handsome young women, with a showy fair-weather look about 
them, which makes one think they would certainly have postponed 
their walk if it had rained, and who carry long silver-handled para- 
sols which were never meant tn be unrolled. Local politicians, ce- 
lebrities whose faces the comic papers have helped to make familiar, 
and play-writers, and book-makers of both sorts, and many other 
men and women too, to whom this promenade is part of their daily 
advertisement. They are there to look and be looked at ; and to 
ha vi' the passing stranger nudge his companion and whisper, " That 
is So-and-so, who is playing at Such-and-such a theatre," is, as Mr. 
Vincent Crummies declared it to be, fame, and like breath to their 
nostrils. They have their reward. There are some who will tell yon 
that Broadway at this point should be as a howling wilderness to 
respectable men and women ; but the}' are those who know the true 
character of the pedestrians more thoroughly than is altogether 
profitable, illustrating that too much knowledge is a dangerous 
thing. It is not essential that you should know that the smooth- 
faced, white-haired man who touched your shoulder as he brushed 
past, keeps a gambling-house at Saratoga during the summer 



26 Broadway 

months, or that the woman at his side is not his wife. They do 
yon no harm, and yon are not on Broadway to enlarge your visiting 
list, but only to enjoy the procession, of which, for the time being, 
you are a part. You need not take it from the point of view of the 
young man on the corner, with his hat knowingly slanted and his 
cane in his side-pocket, nor of the gaping visitor in the hotel-window, 
with the soles of his shoes showing against the pane ; but if you are 
a student of yoiu 1 fellow-men you will find enough bright faces in the 
crowd to send you home an optimist, and so many wrecks and fail- 
ures and fallen favorites of fortune, as to make you wish you had 
selected to walk on the avenue instead. It is even more gayly alive 
at night, when all the shop-fronts are lighted, and the entrances to 
the theatres blaze out on the sidewalk like open fireplaces, and 
when every street-car goes jumping past loaded down to the railings 
with well-dressed theatre-goers, and when the transient strangers 
stand in the doorways of the big hotels, or venture out on little sor- 
ties to the corner and back again. It is at this hour that the clerk 
appears, dressed in his other suit, the one which he keeps for the 
evening, and the girl bachelor, who is either a saleslady or a work- 
ing-girl, as she better chooses to call herself, and who can and does 
walk alone in New York at night unmolested, if she so wishes it, 
which is something she could not do in any other city in the world. 
She has found her hall bedroom cold and lonely after the long work- 
ing-day behind a counter or at a loom, and the loneliness tends to 
homesickness and to make one think, which, as everybody knows, is 
a very dangerous occupation ; so she puts on her hat and slips down 
a side - street and loses herself in the unending procession on 
Broadway, where, though she knows no one, and no one wants to 
know her, there is light and color, and she is at least not alone. Of 
course it is a dangerous place for her, as other young women who 
call themselves non-workers appreciate for her, and for her institute 
reading-rooms and working-girls' clubs and associations, of which 
one hears so little and which accomplish such great and immeasur- 



Broadway 27 

able good. But she may read how great her danger is in the face 
of the young woman who jjasses her with alert, insolent eyes, and 
who a year before was what she is now, and who sees nothing in the 
lighted shop window before which she stops but the reflection of 




" EVENING PAPERS. 

The delivery wagon near Madison Square. 



the man who has dropped out of step with the procession and is 
hovering at her side. 

There is a diagonal street crossing over Broadway just below 
Twenty-sixth Street, which leads pleasantly to that great institution 
of upper Broadway, which never changes, whether it be under the 



2S Broadway 

regime of the first or the third generation. The broad white window- 
shades and the trojjical plants in the iron urns in front of the great 
restaurant, which some one called the largest club of the world, 
never seem to need renewing, and there is always a glimpse from 
Broadway of an array of high-top hats, and curling rings of smoke, 
and moving waiters. You may go continent-trotting all over Eu- 
rope, you may lose yourself fighting tigers in the jungles of India, 
or in carrying a transit over the alkali plain of Montana, or on a 
cattle-ranch in Texas, and }'ou may return to find snow and winter 
where you left dust and summer, and to find strangers where you 
bade farewell to friends, but the big club of Broadway will be just 
as you left it, with as many beautifully dressed women in the dining- 
room, and the same solemn-looking youths in the cafe, and the 
same waiter, who never grows old, to pull out your chair for 
you at your old place at the window which looks out upon Broad- 
way. 

The promenade is best worth looking at around Madison 
Square, either in the summer, when the twilight lasts until late and 
the trees are heavy with leaves, and the gas-jets look like monster 
fire-flies ; or in winter, when the Square is covered with snow, like 
frosting on a great wedding-cake, when it has settled even on Ad- 
miral Farragut's epaulets, and the electric lights shine blue and 
clear through the black, bare branches, and the lamps of the many 
broughams dance past continually to opera or ball, and give a 
glimpse through the frosty pane of a woman's figure muffled in furs 
and swan's-down. There is something exhilarating about this cor- 
ner of Broadway, where the theatres at every turn are bright with 
colored illuminations telling of runs of one hundred nights, and 
where the restaurants and hotels are brilliantly aglow and desper- 
ately busy. It is at this corner that on the nights of the presi- 
dential election the people gather most closely, trampling down the 
grass in the Square, and blocking the street-cars and omnibuses 
with barricades of flesh and blood at fever heat. One man tells 



Broadway 



29 




'• VISITING STATESMEN." 

In front of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, daring a political convention. 

how, on such a night, he spent one hour in forcing his way from 
Twenty- third Street to the Hoffman House, when the crowd of 
patient watchers was so great that men could not raise their hands 



30 Broadway 

to applaud the messages from all over the continent, but had to 
content themselves with shouting their disgust or pleasure at the 
sky. These are the nights when Broadway cannot hold the crowd, 
and it is forced into the avenue and cross-streets until the stere- 
opticon throws the last fatal writing on the billowing wall of canvas, 
and the people learn that a government has changed and that they 
have put a new president into office, and the mob melts noisily 
away, and in the morning there is nothing left of the struggle that 
has brought so great a change over a whole country but the down- 
trodden grass in the Square and a few r bixrnt-out Roman candles in 
the middle of the street. 

In the summer, when everybody is out of town, Madison Square 
draws many of Broadway's pedestrians over to itself, and finds 
seats for them under the trees in the changing glare of the electric 
lamps, which turn the grass and leaves into such a theatrical and 
unwholesomely greenish tint. This is the people's roof-garden, it 
is their summer watering-place, their seashore and mountains, and 
when supper is over they come to the Square to forget the cares of 
the working day and the heat of the third-floor back, and the rou- 
tine that must begin again on the morrow. Old men creep out 
here from the close, hot streets of the East Side, and mumble 
together on the benches ; mothers from the same tenement gossip 
about the rent, and the boy who is doing so w r ell down town, or the 
girl who has gone wrong and who is " away " on the Island. And 
you will see lovers everywhere. You will see a young girl and a 
young man come hurrying toward each other down different paths, 
and you will notice that they begin to smile while they are still 
many yards apart, and that they clasp hands when they meet as 
though they never intended to let go. And then they will pick out 
a bench by itself in the shadow and laugh and whisper together as 
though they were afraid the birds would tell all the foolishly fond 
things they overhear them say. It is not as aristocratic an occu- 
pation as " rocking," it lacks the picturesque surroundings which 



Broadway 



81 



enhance and excuse that institution at Bar Harbor and Narragan- 
sett, there is no sea and no moon, only an electric lamp that hisses 
and sputters and goes out at frequent intervals, but the spirit of 



'.! 



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w* 


* Pr «r 


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THE METROPOLITAN UPERA HOUSE AT XIGHT. 

Broadway and Thirry-nmth Street. 



the thing seems to be very much the same. And there are young- 
married people with a baby carriage trimmed with richer lace than 
the mother herself can afford to wear, and which the young father 
pushes proudly before him, while the woman runs ahead and looks 



32 Broadway 

back to see if the baby is gaining a little sleep before its return to 
the stifling, stuffy air of the flat. 

And sometimes — how very often, only a brief line in the daily 
paper tells — you will see the young man who sits by himself away 
from the crowd on a bench, and who is trying to work out a prob- 
lem on the asphalt with the point of his cane. It is a very old 
problem, and some one once crystallized it by asking in a book if 
life is worth the living. The young man never read the book, but 
he is trying to answer the question by and for himself, and he has 
stepped from the street and has come out here into the Square to 
think it over for the hundredth time. He has placed a great many 
ambitions against very few accomplished facts, and nothing mat- 
ters, nothing is of any consequence, not even success, and what is 
still worse, not even failure. And the girl in the case is honestly 
not worth all this pother — if he could only get to see it ; but he can- 
not see it, and starts restlessly and rubs oirt the markings on the 
asphalt with the sole of his shoe. He is terribly in earnest, is this 
young man, and he will not pose when he has decided and the 
time has come to act ; he will read over the letters in his pocket 
for the last time very steadily, the letters from home and the 
letters from her, and tear them up in small pieces and throw them 
away with the cards that bear his name, with every other scrap of 
paper that might tell the world, which cares so very little after all, 
who he was. When it gets darker and the electric lights throw 
long, black shadows on the empty sidewalks, and the old gentlemen 
get up stiffly and hobble away to bed, and leave only the lovers on 
the benches, the young man will bite a hole in his handkerchief 
where his name was written in by one of his people at home, and 
will step back into the shadow of the tree behind the bench and 
answer the problem in the negative. And the selfish lovers on the 
bench a hundred yards away will jump to their feet when they 
hear the report, startled and frightened, but still holding each 
other's hands. And the park policeman will rap for the officer on 



Broadway 33 

Broadway, who will ring for the ambulance, and the crowd of 
loungers who have no homes to go to, and waiters from the res- 
taurants just getting away from work, and cab-drivers from the 
stand on Broadway will cross over and form a circle, while the boy 
ambulance surgeon kneels in the wet grass and runs his fingers over 
the young man's chest. And he will rise and shake his head and 
say, " This is no case for me," for the young man will have settled 
the question, as far as he is individually concerned, forever. 

Broadway, for so great a thoroughfare, gets its people to bed at 
night at a very proper season. It allows them a scant hour in 
which to eat their late suppers after the theatre, and then it grows 
rapidly and decorously quiet. The night watchmen timi out the 
lights in the big shops ami leave only as many burning as will 
serve to show the eases covered with linen, and the safe, defiantly 
conspicuous, in the rear; the ears begin to jog along more easily 
and at less frequent intervals, prowling nighthawks take the place 
of the smarter hansoms of the day, anil the street-cleaners make 
drowsy attacks on the dirt and mud. There are no all-night res- 
taurants to disturb the unbroken row of business fronts, and the 
footsteps of the patrolman and the rattle of the locks as he tries 
the outer fastenings of the shops echo sharply, and the voices of 
belated citizens bidding each other good-night, as they separate at 
the street corners, have a strangely loud and hollow sound. By 
midnight the street is as quiet and desolate-looking as a summer 
resort in midwinter, when the hotel and cottage 'windows are barred 
up and the band-stand is covered an inch deep with snow. It is 
almost as deserted as Broadway is on any Sunday morning, when 
the boys who sell the morning papers are apparently the only New 
Yorkers awake. It deserves a little rest and refmbisking after 
having been ground down all day by the weight of so many thou- 
sand passing feet and heavy wheels, but it gets very little of either, 
for as soon as the watering-cart and the broom of the street-cleaners 
disappear into the darker night of the side-streets, milk-carts and 



34 



Broadway 



'■£ 



f 





1 



4-**-$$ ?•• 





' SOMETHING THE MATTER." 



Near the Lincoln Statue, Union Square. 

truck gardeners' wagons begin to roll and rumble from the femes to 
the early market, piled high with fresh-smelling vegetables, and 
with the farmer's boy sleeping on top of the load of cabbages while 



Broadway 35 

the father dozes on the driver's seat ; and then mad-carts and heavy 
tracks and drays begin to brunp noisily over the cobbles, and lights 
to glow in the basements of the hotels, and those who are con- 
demned to open and sweep out the offices down town turn out into 
the darkness, still half-awake, and with heavy half-closed eyes, and, 
then comes the bluish-gray light and the first fresh breath of the 
morning, and the policemen shiver slightly and yawn and shrug 
their shoulders, and the gas-lights grow old and tawdry-looking, as 
down each cross-street comes the warm red rays of the sun, rising 
grandly out of the East River, and Broadway, rested and swept and 
garnished, takes up the burden of another day. 



PICCA D I LLY 
By Andrew Lang 

THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY W. DOUGLAS ALMOND 




A CHAT IN PICCADILLY. 



PICCADILLY 



IT may be unjust to say that among the uncounted streets of 
London not one is beautiful. But it is plain,' on a moment's 
reflection, that a beautiful street is less the likely to exist in 
monotonous expanses of London than iu most other cities. There 
are few towns but have somewhere an outlook on nature, on the 
world beyond the walls. But London is so vast, and lies so low, 
that she lias hardly a single glance at nature. From the National 
Gallery, gazing over Trafalgar Square toward the towers of West- 
minster, and catching beyond a vague glimpse of the Surrey hills, 
you are faintly reminded that the whole earth is not yet covered 
over by brick houses. On Cheyne Walk, too, the river, with its 
mists, its little gravelly beach, its boats, flows from the distant 
heights, through the meadows, under the poplars, far away, and 
murmurs an echo of the remote country. From the top of the 
Pavilion at Lord's, too, whence the eye beholds merely a soft va- 
porous distance, broken here and there by a spire or a clump of 
trees, it is not impossible to fancy that London has a kind of 
charm. But she has no great street whence, as from Princes 
Street in Edinburgh, there are conspicuous the rocks of an acropo- 
lis, the high-piled ridge of the old town, and the remoter beauty of 
the Lothian hills. The fresh air of Venice blowing in from the 
sea is as alien to London as are the noiseless wet ways of Venice. 



40 Piccadilly 

Nature, in short, except as far as trees are concerned, is out of view 
and out of the question. Then, as to architectural beauty, London 
is as inferior to Venice or Florence in grace and stateliuess of 
structures and monuments, palaces and towers, and flower-markets, 
as in her eternal absence of natural loveliness. Here is no Arno, 
no quaint, venerable bridges, no statues like the Perseus of Cellini, 
or the David of Michael Angelo. Here is no St. Mark's, no Bar- 
gello, for London, in spite of the antiquity of the city, is a very 
new town in most of her western quarters, and was built hastily 
and inconsiderately by people among whom architecture was at the 
lowest ebb. Thus, to take even an example in England, London 
has not a public way to compare with the High Street at Oxford. 
The new age and new buildings have done then worst for " the 
High," but they have not wholly ruined those curves, like the 
windings of a stream, that unrivalled mixture of old academic with 
old domestic architecture, those ancient gables of all heights and 
shapes, those latticed windows edged with flowers, those solemn 
and hospitable college gateways, and those glimpses through them 
into " deep, Avet walks of gray old gardens ; " while the whole bend 
and curve of the street ends in the glorious tower of Magdalen and 
the bridge over the Cherwell. All this, degraded as it has been by 
an unsightly tramway and spoiled by the eccentric new buildings 
on which the colleges have wasted their money, is yet incomparably 
more beautiful than anything in London. " The High " survives 
from the leisurely age when men could build. 

Now, if we take Piccadilly as the representative beautiful street 
of London, we cannot deny that it has some advantages. Stalling 
from Regent Street in the east, it runs westward, at first narrow 
enough and commonplace, with a plain church on the left, with 
Burlington House and its picture-gallery, a large, commodious, 
modern edifice, on the right, for the rest lined with ordinary shops 
displaying waterproofs, boots, books (Mr. Quariteh's shop and vast 
collection is here), and similar articles of commerce. Where St. 



Piccadilly 43 

James's Street descends abruptly to the left there is a view of St. 
James's Palace, a lugubrious royal residence, uninhabited by roy- 
alty, which " excites the wonder of foreigners on account of its 
mean appearance." Then comes Arlington Street' with the palazzo 
of Lord Salisbury, and after that break, the best part of Piccadilly 
begins. All along the left side are the trees and verdure of the 
Green Park. The right hand foot-path flows, so to speak, beneath 
houses of which Mr. Loftie says in his " History of London," that, 
" though built with very little regard to cost, not one of them pre- 
sents any architectural features worth notice, or, indeed, worthy of 
the situation." 

So the wide thoroughfare takes its western way : on one side 
is grass, chestnut-trees, nurses, children, hawthorns ; on the other 
side are tall houses, not "worthy of the situation." Clubs, palaces 
of the rich or noble, a shop here and there, line the right-hand 
side, and finally, after the road ascends again, we have the Duke 
of Wellington's arch and statue on the left, iu a space now much 
widened and improved, and, on the right, is Apsley House, where 
the old duke lived and died, and Hyde Park Comer, the park 
gates, the naked statue of Achilles, and an effigy of Lord Byron 
with his dog BoatsAvain, Avhich art owes to the contested genius 
of Mr. Belt, or, as others declared, of Mr. Belt and an " artist's 
ghost." 

Down and up the hill and dale of Piccadilly carnages glide, 
carts rattle, hansoms hurry, men and women walk to the park, or 
westward to Kensington and Brompton, or, in the eastward direc- 
tion, to the clubs, to Pall Mall, the Strand, the City. It is, on 
the whole, not a very worried or eager crowd, not like the throng of 
the Strand or Cheapside. Most of the pedestrians are sufficiently 
well-to-do ; beggars do not much beset Piccadilly ; in the early 
evening the steppers westward are the greater number, going either 
for a walk in the parks, or homeward, to dinner. About eight the 
world is streaming out to its engagements, gleaming expanses of 




«-:-._; ;;,:;> --*i|fp 






A MORNING WALK— PICCADILLY. 

"On one side is grass, chestnut-trees, nurses, children, hawthorns." 



Piccadilly 45 

white shirts shine out of the cabs, the carriages are full of ladies in 
their evening array. Dinnerward or theatreward goes all the throng 
of politicians, dandies, lawyers, idlers, stock -brokers. 

The wooden pavements prevent the incessant passage of vehicles 
from being inordinately noisy, and a native of stony Edinbiugh 
justly remarked that, when he first visited London, he was more 
struck by the quiet of the streets than by anything else. 

In all the hastening or leisurely multitudes one may marvel how 
many ask themselves if this is a beautiful street, if it deserves to be 
one of the most famous thoroughfares in the greatest of modern cities. 
Many, if they were asked, would say that Piccadilly is cheerful, and 
is satisfactory. This is, indeed, the happiest way of criticising Pic- 
cadilly. Thanks to the Green Park on its left side, the street has 
verdure, at least, and is airy. The ups and downs of it have a pict- 
uresqueness of their own. The wealthy houses, if they are not digni- 
fied, if they have not the stately proportions of Florentine palaces, are, 
at all events, clean and large, and so far imposing. There are two times 
and seasons when Piccadilly looks its best. One of these is in mid- 
May, when all the flowering trees are hi blossom, when the chestnut 
hangs out its fragrant tapers in the green shade of its fans, when the 
hawthorn perfumes even the London air, when the laburnums are 
" drooping wells of fire," when on all the boughs is the tender green, 
the first fiush of spring. London is very well supplied with trees, and, 
for a few days early in the season, the town has almost a Chaucerian 
aspect of prettiness and innocence. That jaded old Piccadilly in her 
spring dress looks as fresh as a young lacty in her first season. The 
women have not grown weary of their unrelenting social activities ; 
there are radiant faces newly come from the country, there are tall 
young men of rosy aspect, beautifully attired, with high stiff col- 
lars, and gloves irreproachable, and lustrous boots. This is the 
moment to see Piccadilly — bright, gay, crowded, and yet not sophis- 
ticated and worldly to look upon. 

The next best aspect, or perhaps the best aspect, of Piccadilly is 



46 



Piccadilly 



in the evening in mid-October, when the lingering light flushes the 
houses, the sunset struggling through the opals of the London 

smoke, red and 
azures blending in 
the distance, while 
all down through 
" the gradual dusk}' 
veil " of evening the 
serpentine lines of 
lamps begin to 
burn. London, 
when there is not 
a fog, has sunsets 
of peculiar beauty, 
thanks perhaps to the 
smoky air ; whatever the 
reason, they are very 
soft, rich, and strange. 
Many a time, walking- 
eastward through the 
early dusk in Piccadilly, 
I have turned back, and stood 
watching these beautiful ef- 
fects, which Mr. Marshall, by the bye, 
often renders admirably in water col- 
ors. Unless civilization quite shuts 
out the sky she cannot absolutely improve 
beauty off the face of the town. And in 
Piccadilly there are " lots of sky," as the 
little street boy said when, for the first 
time, he was taken into the country. 
Above the crowd, the smoke, the struggle, beyond the yells of 
them who vend the disastrous evening papers, far remote from 




"SANDWICH MEN IN THEIK PRISON 
OF WOOD." 



Piccadilly 47 

the cries of murder and sedition, the serene sky looks down on 
you, and the sunset brings its harmonies even into Piccadilly. 
The artist cannot represent these things in his black and white ; 
these beauties must be seen, and into many a spirit that is 
tired of towns they bring their own tranquillity, and speak si- 
lently of how the solemn and charmed horn is passing in her royal 
robes over mountains and pale sea-straits, over long river pools, 
over reedy lochs where our hearts are, and where we fain would be, 
though we " pad the weary hoof " in Piccadilly. London is a hard 
place for those who in their cradles " were breathed on by the rural 
Pan," but even in London Nature has her moments, and does not 
al •solutely and always veil her face. Such are the pleasanter aspects 
of Piccadilly, a street more or less of pleasure, though in this respect 
far unlike the Boulevard in Paris. There is no street life, so to 
speak, in the wealthier thoroughfares of London. There is nothing 
at all resembling the gayety of the Boulevard, with the cafes, the 
crowds of people contemplating existence over a glass of beer or a 
cup of coffee from the comfortable haven of cafe awnings and cafe 
chairs. Here are none of the bright Idosques, none of the posts cov- 
ered with many-colored and alluring bills of the play. The shops 
are few, only that of Mr. Giuliano, who makes the pretty copies of 
ancient jewelry and Renaissance enamels, is very attractive to stare 
into, whereas on the Boulevard the shop-windows are a perpetual 
delight. Nor are there theatres here, with their bustle. The theatres 
are far off in the Strand, and have no external attractions. The onlv 
open-air street life is that of the cabmen on the stand opposite, or 
of the depressing rows of " sandwich men," dismal little processions 
with their advertisements of soaps, plays, and pictures. To be sure, 
we boast what Paris knows not, the Piccadilly goat, who lives in, or 
often at, the door of a large comer house. Why this goat is kept 
here out of doors is a mystery, probably not connected with the wor- 
ship of Dionysus. There is another goat, a much seedier, dingier 
goat, who browses such grasses as grow outside the Nonconformist 



Piccadilly 



office, in the purlieus of old Alsatia, where Nigel Oliphant met with 
his adventures. No account of Piccadilly is complete which leaves 
the goat out of the 
picture, an unexpect- 
ed rural figure in the 
foreground. 

Piccadilly 
is not a place 
where the for- 
eigner or the 
stranger from 
the country 




TOE PICCADILLY GOAT. 



need expect to see famous contemporaries much, or to meet states- 
men lounging in little groups, chatting about the perplexed fort- 
unes of the nation. Piccadilly is not at all like a Christmas 
number of a society journal, thickty studded with caricatures of 
celebrities and notorieties. They are much more likelj' to be en- 
countered near the Houses of Parliament, or in Pall Mall you may 
view generals coming from the War Office ; bishops and scientific 



Piccadilly 49 

characters trudging to the sanctuary of the Athenaeum ; young men 
of fashion near the Marlborough Club ; princesses driving out of 
Marlborough House. In the Strand there go great lawyers, and 
theatrical people, and journalists of all grades pacing to or from 
Fleet Street. But, as for company, Piccadilly is here a street like 
any other ; there be diplomatists, to be sure, on the steps of the St. 
James's Club. At least the spectator may fancy he beholds a di- 
plomatist, and no doubt a novelist or a poet or two may be watched 
looking out of the bay window of the Savile, and all sorts and con- 
ditions of men do eternally walk up or down Piccadilly. But it 
cannot be called a specially lion-haunted shore. I have never 
observed, "for why should I deceive you?" Mr. Irving coming 
along, arm in arm with Mr. Toole, nor Mr. Parnell lounging with 
Mr. Timothy Healy, nor Mr. Payn (I can swear to this) taking exer- 
cise with Mr. "William Black, in Piccadilly, nor Mr. Rudyard Kip- 
ling meditating the military Muse in these purlieus. But this may 
be due to " a malady of not marking " the men and women who go 
by. tn a habit of inattention. It is a case of " eyes and no eyes," as 
in the childish apologue, and, if the artist has eyes, and has been 
lucky enough to observe princes, pens, poets, painters, politicians, 
warriors, in Piccadilly, why should he not draw their effigies as he 
beheld them ? It is certain that, somehow, Pall Majl and St. James's 
Street are better places wherein to lie in wait for the passing celeb- 
rity, and see the traits of the men who make, or obstruct, or re- 
cord history. From Marlborough House to the Athena?um Club is 
capital hunting ground ; there lions are almost as common as quite 
ordinary persons. Let me confess that I have not a good eye for a 
lion, and often do not know the monarch of the forest when I see 
him. Besides, nobody can see him iu a fog, and the extreme west 
of Piccadilly is particularly foggy, probably because one of the 
many " bournes " < ir brooks over which London is built flows under 
it, and its dankness exhales in clouds of yellow vapor. 

This reflection, that a river may flow through the middle of 



50 Piccadilly 

Piccadilly, as through Cheapside in "Wordsworth's poem of " Poor 
Susan," may serve to remind us that Piccadilly was not always a 
street, that it has first a rural and then a suburban history of its 
own. 

I confess that my owu taste resembles that of Horace Walpole 
rather than of Madame du Deffand, concerning whom he says that 
she was always interested in the affairs of the moment, and he in 
the business of a century ago. This is not a modern taste, it is 
true ; the world prefers to read the " posters " of the evening 
papers exposed on the pavement at Hyde Park Corner rather than 
to wonder what Hyde Park Corner and the turnstile there were like 
one, or two, or three hundred years since. 

We have been among " actualities," and shall return to them, 
and persons who are impatient of street history may skip a page 
that deals with the past. Piccadilly has its history, which, as usual, 
explains its present condition, and shows how it became what it is. 
The street is haunted, too, by fair women and brave men long dead, 
of whom some readers may like to be put in mind as they wander 
among the living. 

In the old times, say in Queen Elizabeth's reign, Hyde Park, 
near which Piccadilly ends, was a forest, with " herbage, pannage, 
and browze wood for deer." The woods were still thick, and 
frequented by robbers, many years later. All that was fine aud 
fashionable in the park was " The Ring," where people rode and 
drove, and where foot-races were rim, while duels, as late as Field- 
ing's time, were fought hard by. Here Mohun slew the Duke of 
Hamilton, here Captain Booth, in Amelia, fought the colonel. We 
must get rid, in our minds, of the iron railings and the pavement 
outside, and of Apsley House. We must fancy a country road, with 
hedge and ditch, running beside the forest, and leading to the still 
distant town. At the west end of Piccadilly, or near it, the citizens 
of London threw up their earthworks ; women digging aud carry- 
ing earth, ladies and all, when the royal army threatened the city, 






52 Piccadilly 

in 1662. There was then no street of Piccadilly, there was merely 
"the Beading road," the road, or one of the roads, that led into 
London from the west. But the name Piccadilly, an extraordinary 
name enough, about which antiquarians have argued much, already 
existed. The older opinions, contested by Mr. Jesse in his " Liter- 
ary and Historical Memorials of London," was that " Piccadilly " is 
derived from a house called "Peccadilla Hall." Here the ruffs for 
the neck, called Peccadillas, were vended, and it is supposed that 
the name of the street came from the name of this warehouse. But 
it seems extremely improbable that a fashionable shop would be 
out in the country some way from town, as the Reading road then 
was. Moreover, Mr. Jesse holds that the ruffs did not come into 
fashion till 1616 or so, whereas we find the word Piccadilly applied 
to the "place in Gerard's curious old "Herbal" of 1596. Nothing 
can show better how London has grown than what Gerard has to 
say about "Piccadilla." On the banks of the dry ditches there, he 
remarks, grows "the small wild buglosse," or ox-tongue. The 
botanist would find little to collect in small dry ditches near Picca- 
dilly now, and the banks of that rural stream, the Tybourne, are 
deep below the houses. Nearly sixty years passed before there was 
a street of Piccadilly, and not till Charles Seconds reigii did the 
houses begin to creep westward toward Hyde Park Corner. These 
houses were originally palaces of the nobles, with vast gardens and 
pleasances. For example, where Devonshire House now stands, a 
large unlovely palace enough, was Berkeley House, where Pepys 
dined on September 23, 1672. " The gardens are incomparable," 
says Pepys, " by reason of the inequality of the ground, and a pretty 
piscina. . The holly hedges on the terrace I advised the planting of." 
We must suppose Piccadilly, then, to have been like that part of 
Campden Hill where Argyll Lodge, the Duke of Pnvtland's house, 
and Holly Lodge, Macaulay's home, and others, stand among their 
trees and flowers, only much more magnificent and spacious. Lord 
Berkeley's pleasances extended over Berkeley Square, but in 1684 



Piccadilly 



53 



part of the ground was already being built upon, to the sorrow of 
John Evelyn. Berkeley House was burned early in the eighteenth 
century, and the unromantic Devonshire House was erected on its 
site. Next Berkeley House was the still more splendid Clarendon 




A GATEWAY OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY. BURLINGTON HOUSE. 

House, built by the historian of the rebellion. This came into the 
possession of the second Duke of Albemarle, who sold it ; and 
Dover Street, Albemarle Street, Old Bond Street, and Grafton 
Street were built on its site and on its pleasances, while the sylvan 
Evelyn wailed like a dispossessed Dryad. The gardens of the Earl 
of Sunderland were covered by the chambers called the Albany, 



54 Piccadilly 

leading into Piccadilly, and all these things are examples of the way 
in which Piccadilly grew. The melancholy process is being illus- 
trated on every side round London every day. The old spacious 
houses and pleasant gardens are pulled down, the old elms fall, and 
rows of ugly streets are run up where the trees budded and the 
thrushes sang. Probably this will be the fate of Holland House 
also ; " the great wen " swiftly and steadily eats its way into the 
heart of the country. Very little taste is shown by the builders ; 
the eighteenth century's taste was in favor of good solid brick boxes 
of no outward beauty, and these be they which now stand fronting 
Piccadilly. 

As late as 1745 the west end of the street must still have bordered 
on the fields. When Fielding's Squire "Western rode up to town, in 
search of Sophia, he alighted at an inn (next what is now Apsley 
House), which was called " The Pillars of Hercules." The name 
must mean that beyond the Pillars was the region of the unex- 
plored, that this was the town's end. It would be the first inn in 
London that the worthy squire reached. Near it, but in later times, 
resided the famous, or infamous, "Old Q.," the Duke of Queens- 
berry, in his profligate latest years. This nobleman, born. in 1721, 
lived till 1810. All his life he did exactly as he pleased, and he 
was pleased to be entirely regardless of opinion and of decency in 
his unfaltering pursuit of pleasure. He never " unharnessed," as 
the French say ; he never ceased to patronize the ladies of the 
opera; but he was good-humored, opendianded, and well-bred. 
Robert Burns once passed an evening in his company, and though 
Burns severely censured — in the nobility — the pursuits which mor- 
alists deplore in his own history, he was quite won over by the 
wicked Old Q. He sent Old Q. his famous poem of " The Whistle," 
and says to a correspondent, " Though I am afraid His Grace's 
character as a Man of Worth is very equivocal, yet he is certainly a 
nobleman of the first taste, and a gentleman of the finest manners." 
Deaf of one ear, blind of one eye, this wicked nobleman used to sit 



Piccadilly 55 

in his balcony, watching the world go past, and looking down on 
Piccadilly. He preferred that Hood of human beings to the view of 
the Thames at Richmond. " What is there," he asked, " to make so 
much of in the Thames ? I am quite tired of it ; there it goes, flow, 
flow, flow, always the same." But of the torrent that went "flow, 
flow, flow," past his house he never wearied, and it is said that he 
always had a man and horse ready to pursue any naiad who charmed 
him from the stream of Piccadilly. A good deal of his money went, 
at his death, to that other philosopher who lived in Gaunt House, 
Great Gaunt Street, and is now best known to men as the Marquis 
of Bteyne, and the patron of Mrs. Eawdon Crawley. 

It is part of the moralities of Piccadilly to remember that Old 
Q., sitting on his balcony under his parasol, watching the women 
with his one wicked old eye, had been the gay young Lord March, 
who " never knew Mrs. Bernstein but as an old woman ; and if she 
ever had beauty, hang me if I know how she spent it." This was 
the Lord March and Buglen whom a young gentleman out of 
Virginia beat at a long leap : " For the honor of old Virginia, I had 
the gratafication," says Mr. Henry Warrington, "of beating his 
Lordship by more than two feet, viz., two feet nine inches," and of 
assuring him that " Colonel Washington of Mount Vernon could 
beat me by a good foot." Is it not curious how Harry Warrington's 
artless prattle lingers in our memories, and we see young Lord 
March more clearly, perhaps, in "The Virginians" than even in 
Horace Walpole, or in his own letters to George Selwyn, with his 
confidences about velvet suits, and bets, and La Bena, and the 
Zamperini. " I dread every event that is connected with women," 
says the real Lord March, "they are all so extremely wrong- 
headed." This was the remark of a noble with great experience. 
It is worth noting that, despite his repute as a gambler, Lord 
March did not bet sums which woidd now be considered enormous. 
After some losses at Newmarket, he was much more than " brought 
home " by winning about ,£4,000. The modem " plunger " would 



56 Piccadilly 

despise suck a total. The wanderer in Piccadilly, who likes to 
muse on the changes of human fortune, the turns of that wheel 
which the Buddha contemplates, may please himself by reflecting 
that, along this way passed the carriages of the Princesse de Lain- 
balle and of Madame du Barry. The former dined with the Duke 
of Queensberry here, before the Revolution which brought her 
cruel and shameful death. But it was during the Revolution that 
Madame dir Barry, in company with the Prince of Wales, sat at the 
ducal table. She, too, returned to France and to her death. In 
this house, also, Horace Walpole heard a story of Democracy, how 
at Lyons a young man was roasted alive, and his mother was made 
to look on, and was beaten to death. 

He who was Will March, and became old Q., sleeps now under 
the altar in St. James's Church, and a great many people remem- 
ber him best by Mr. Locker's verses, 

" The wise and the silly, 
Old P. or Old Q., we must leave Piccadilly." 

The modern houses in Piccadilly are not very much haunted 
hj ghosts of the fashionable, or literary, or historical past. From 
Number 20 Sir Francis Burdett was taken to prison, though he 
had barricaded his house, provoked a riot, and defied the Speaker 
of the House of Commons, just eighty years ago. Number 94 was 
Lord Palmerston's dwelling, from 1850 till his death in 1865 ; here 
he gave political parties, and this was the last fortress of contented 
Whiggism. In Number 139 Byron parted from Lady Byron, "in 
the utmost kindness," says Moore. She was going to visit her 
father, who Avrote to the poet that she would return no more. 
What mysteries passed in Number 139, part of old Q.'s old house, 
we shall never really know ; the cause of the separation is said to 
have been so simple that nobody could ever find it out. Some 
poets are " gey ill to live wi'," as Mrs. Carlyle said about her son. 
Some ladies never, never can understand that a man of letters 



Piccadilly 59 

should sometimes be left alone in his den. Byron himself says, 
that, however much in love he might be at any moment, he always 
felt, even when with the fair, a hankering to be back in his untidy 
library. There is a story of Lady Byron's entering the den and 
asking, "Do I disturb you, Byron?" "Yes, damnably," answered 
Ckilde Harold, in, shall we say, an intelligible if not a pardonable 
irritation. Lawyers, doctors, business men are not interrupted by 
their dear wives when they are at work. The sex understands that 
their duties are serious. They don't alwa} - s take this view of mere 
poetry and prose. 

I have a private theory, an innocent hypothesis, that Lady 
Byron was jealous of the Muse ; that she left her lord because he 
said she disturbed liim damnably. Dr. Lushington knew what Lady 
Byron said at the time ; Mrs. Beecher Stowe told the world what 
Lady Byron said in later life, but 139 Piccadilly keeps its secret. 
The skeleton in the closet has " flitted," like the North Country 
Brownie. Old Q. would have explained the whole mystery by say- 
ing that " all women are so extremely wrong-headed." That phi- 
losopher never married, or there might have been another Hegira 
from 139 Piccadilly. The house is now brave with a uew front, 
and is occupied by Mr. Algernon Bortkwick, the proprietor of the 
Morning Post. The house in Piccadilly had this advantage for 
Byron that it was close to his piiblisher's shop, Mr. Murray's, in 
Albemarle Street, where that museum of literary antiques still 
stands, an interesting place of pilgrimage. 

Apsley House, at Hyde Park Corner, is, of course, historical. 
The site was originally bought by Lord Bathurst from an old 
soldier, whom, in reward for his valor at Dettingen, George II. had 
allowed to squat there with his apple-stall. This proves the slight 
value of the site under the second George. Here the great duke 
lived ; here the strange young lady left Bibles at the door instead 
of cards, here the windows were broken by the populace in the Be- 
form Bill riots, and the duke had iron shutters put up. Later, 



60 Piccadilly 

when he was in favor again, and when a crowd followed him with 
cheers, the duke only pointed to his iron shutters. 

Many windows have been broken in Piccadilly since then. 
There was a famous riot in February, a very few years ago. The 
mob had mustered in Trafalgar Square. I met them in Pall Mall, 
where they were hooting outside the windows of the Carlton Club, 
and some leader was waving a red flag from the steps. They were 
not, at that moment, a large mob ; but no police were visible. By 
some blunder they were stationed in the Mall, behind Pall Mall, 
not in Pall Mall. I went into my own club, which was eastward 
of the mob, and heard presently that they had run through the 
streets, up St. James's, along Piccadilly, through South Audley 
Street, breaking windows, bursting into shops, throwing gold 
watches and legs of mutton through the windows of carriages. It 
was a great field-day for Liberty and the Bights of Man. Next 
morning the shops had all their shutters up ; the club windows 
were riddled ; the crowd was in the streets, amused, pleased, but 
perhaps too startled by its sudden success to begin again at once. 
It was curious to note how the rioters had always thrown to their 
left ; on the right hand of St. James's Street the houses had 
suffered very little, if at all. In Piccadilly the St. James's Club had 
somehow been spared. The Savile, next door, was in smithereens. 
Piccadilly has seen plenty of commotion since, and will see plenty 
more, in the nature of things. It is the highway, or one of the 
highways, of limitless processions, marching to that Mons Sacer of 
the park, where we have demonstrations every week. The most 
famous was that of 1866, when the park gates were closed (legally 
or illegally) and the crowd, having, half by accident, broken down 
the iron railings, took possession of the place. We have not yet 
succeeded in outdoing the Gordon riots of the last century, bat give 
us time ! The multitude was then unorganized, and did not know 
Avhat it wanted, or wherefore it had come together. In those re- 
spects it is greatly advanced, and has all the modern improvements. 



Piccadilly 



61 



We know not precisely to what goal it steps, the endless procession 
of marshalled men with banners that weekly invades Piccadilly. 




' THE HORSE GUARDS TRAMPLING BY. 



But, if the aspiration of the journal of this party, for a time when 
there " shall be no more Pall Mall," is realized, one may presume 
that there will also be no Piccadilly. Its mansions may become 



62 Piccadilly 

communistic barracks of the people. Or it may lie in fire-blackened 
ruins, as part of Paris did twenty years ago. And the trees and 
grass may grow over the tumbled masonry, and buglosse, or ox- 
tongue, may flower again in the dry ditches, as it did when Gerard 
wrote his " Herbal," " the dry ditches about Piccadilly." To this 
end all cities must inevitably come, even Dean Burgon's 

' ' Bose-red city, half as old as time ; " 

but let lis hope that some centuries will pass before London fol- 
lows 

" Memphis and Babylon, and either Thebes, 

And Priam's towery town with its one beech." 

What a fascination these lines have, and how many of the people 
who walk down Piccadilly to-day (members of the Savile Club ex- 
cluded) can tell the name of their author ? 

•J" Piccadilly is often the path of empire as well as of revolution. 
No street was more crowded and blithe, I believe, in the wonderful 
summer weather of the Jubilee, when feelings of loyal emotion led 
this chronicler to a part of Galloway which is not thickly populated. 
There a man and his wife lately came into the village from the 
country, to settle a strange domestic dispute. The man had done 
some work on the day before ; the wife reproved him for labor- 
ing on the Sabbath. He denied that it was the Sabbath, and the 
couple had to walk to the village to ascertain the truth about 
the day of the week. In that untrodden wilderness there was not 
much jubilee, and I cannot say, as an eye-witness, what sort of spec- 
tacle Piccadilly presented. It was interesting, however, when, 
after the campaign of Tel el Kebir, our strangely various little force, 
Indian contingent and all, marched through the cheering street, un- 
der windows crowded with ladies. The spectacle was curious and 
stirring, but Tel el Kebir brought in little luck, and soon we had 
the town in mourning for Khartoum, and saw the pick of our forces 
depart for futile fighting by the Red Sea. ' Thus the fortunes of 



Piccadilly 



63 



empire roll up or down Piccadilly ; now it is an army that passes 
fresh from battle and victory, now a crowd of angry men eager for a 
happier and easier life, now a tattered regiment of malcontents with 
stones in their hands and curses on their lips. 1 ' Then there comes 
the usual press of life, the fair la- 
dies driving behind splendid horses, 
sandwich men in their prison of 
wood, as if undergoing a Chinese 
punishment, the Horse Guards tram- 
pling by in helmet and corselet, the 
most magnificent example of Eng- 
lishmen gorgeously arrayed in pomp 
of war ; girls selling matches, small 
boys screaming out " Winner," with 
sheets of damp sporting intelligence 
in their hands ; the}' run and roar 
with special speed and energy on 
the Derby Day. The daudies are 
walking delicately ; the omnibuses 
rumbling, the country visitors are 
gaping at the shops, or at the 
changes where the Duke's arch used 
to stand, with the grotesque statue " to show him what people 
thought he was like." Piccadilly is an epitome of London, in all 
but its trade, a street never quiet, even when there comes a fog 
so deep that boys run about with lighted links yelling for patronage. 
At night, in the season, it is a sight to see the long line of carriages 
orderly arrayed, waiting for their masters and mistresses, who are 
attending some great functions in some great house. 

The street seems untraver sable, wild with horses, shouts, frantic 
whistles for cabs, lights, and all the mingled bustle of setting down 
and taking up. But it is traversed somehow ; the London coach- 
men and cabmen must possess extraordinary nerve and presence of 




'SMALL BOYS, SCKEA51IXG OUT 'WINNER!' 



64 



Piccadilly 



mind. Occasionally there is a carnage accident, there conies a run- 
away horse, or a fight arises between two carters of the old school, 
who do not disdain a bout of fisticuffs. Then a dense circle of spec- 
tators gathers in a moment ; you may almost make a crowd in Lon- 
don streets by stooping to tie your boot-lace. The public is greedy 
of spectacle and emotion ; a prodigious number of persons are ready 
to stare complacently at even the most ordinary occurrence. A 




' AT NIGHT, IN THE SEASON, IT IS A SIGHT TO SEE THE 
LONG LINE OF CARRIAGES, ORDERLY ARRAYED, ■WAIT- 
ING." 



difference of opinion as to distance and fare between a cabman and 
his client is at once surrounded by a " gallery." Mr. Anstey, in his 
" Voces Populi," is the admirably observant recorder of what the 
populace says on such occasions, and very humorous and pointed 
are its remarks, xevy instructive the fashions in which its unsought 
verdict veers. But all this is true enough of any London street. 
Piccadilly is like the rest, except for its large, if not stately, build- 
ings, its airiness and fringe of green, its picturesque windings and 
ups and downs. It is by no means the most interesting of our 



Piccadilly 65 

thoroughfares, because of its comparative novelty, its comparative 
lark of tradition. 

The High Street of Edinburgh has memories to fill a volume ; 
memories courtly, chivalrous, ghostly, sanguinary, magical, relig- 
ious. All moods and passions have breathed in it since 

•' Startled burghers fled afar, 
The slogan of the Border war." 

" Each stone you tread has its history," and so have the stones, 
could they cry out, of the Higli Street in Oxford, or the lanes of 
York, or the streets about the Tower. But Piccadilly is yet too 
fresh and novel, and will scarce yield a few pages while other 
streets might till a quarto of memories. It is so changed, too, that 
we can hardly fancy what it was like when George Selwyn walked 
along it to White's, or Lord March drove by with the Zamperini. 
In going from Pall Mall to the park, or westward, it is more pleas- 
ant to avoid Piccadilly, and fare diagonally across the pretty Green 
Park, where the little boys are playing a kind of cricket, and the 
little girls are busy at " rounders," a rudimentary sort of baseball, 
and lovers are telling their tale beneath the hawthorns, and the 
dingy London sheep are browsing. Someone informs me that he 
was once stepping westward by this route, when he met Mr. Thack- 
eray, whom he knew, also making tor Kensington, and shunning 
the noise and glare of Piccadilly. They walked a little distance 
together, and then Mr. Thackeray confessed that he was meditating 
the Muse, and my friend left him. The poem he was trying to 
beat out was one of his best, the " Lines on a Venice Love Lamp," 
addressed, I think, to a daughter of Mr. Dickens, "Mrs. Kather- 
ine's Lantern " is the name of the piece : 

" Lady, do you know the tune? 

Ah, we all of us have hummed it ! 
I've an old guitar has thrummed it ! 
Under many a changing moon. 



66 Piccadilly 

Shall I try it? Do-Re-Mi, 

What is this ? Ma foi, the fact is 

That my hand is out of practice. 

And my poor old fiddle cracked is, 
And a man — I let the truth out — 
Who has almost every tooth out, 

Cannot sing as once he sung 

When he was young, as you are young, 

When he was young, and lutes were strung, 

And love-lamps in the casement hung.'' 

One likes to think of Thackeray, coming westward, perhaps, 
from Hanway Court, 

" Coming from a gloomy court, 
Place of Israelite resort," 

carrying to a girl the little lamp, with " the initials K. and E.," 
and touchiDg again the old cracked lute, and humming his do, re, 
mi, within hearing of the roar of Piccadilly. Who knows what 
thoughts are in the minds of the people we pass, and if one of 
them is, perhaps, a poet, his head full of fancies and musical num- 
bers ! The old guitar is a good deal thrummed in Piccadilly, some- 
times to a golden tune on the flags, where Old Q.'s ghost would find 
plenty of the ladies he liked to watch. The dancing music behind 
the wide windows is chiming to the same melody, do, re, nil, in the 
ears of golden youth. But what have we to do with all that, we 
whose " poor old fiddle cracked is," except to keep out of the way 
of the carriages, and, hailing a modest omnibus, get westward, 
skirting the Park, where, even in London, the limes are fragrant 
in the soft moonlit air. Enough of racket, enough of the spectacle 
of men and women, bustling and changing about as vigorously as if 
they had never heard that " life would be tolerable but for its pleas- 
rues." Let them keep charging forward, "going on," they say, 
from one crowded house to another crowded house, whither the 
people they have just left follow them, and so to a third, and a 
fourth, and to bed at last when rosy-fingered dawn is creeping up 



Piccadilly 



67 




" THE COUNTRY VISITORS ARE GAPING AT THE SHOP9. 

from the east, dawn that makes even London streets mysteriously 
fair, and that lavishes her amber and purple splendors on half- 
empty, jaded Piccadilly. 



68 Piccadilly 

This essay is not precisely a Praise of Piccadilly. The writer 
is one who, like the good Lord James of Douglas, " would liefer 
hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep." To a taste not fond of 
cities no street is very fascinating, not even that Florentine road 
by the yellow river, within sight of the olives and the airy purple 
hills. Much less, then, can any thoroughfare in the huge, smoky, 
choking London appeal to one with any charm, or win any affec- 
tion. But there is one comfort : no Londoner cares for what is 
said about London. The place bewitches many women, perhaps 
most women, and many men, with an inexplicable spell. Like 
Captain Morris they prefer " the sweet shady side of Pall Mall " to 
any moor or valley, hill or woodland. What it is that allures them, 
beyond a kind of instinct of gregarionsness, an attractive force in 
proportion to the mass of human beings, one cannot conceive. 
London is full of people, comfortably established people, who have 
no business there, and why in the world do they come '? It is a 
mystery, for they are not even in society, using the narrow sense of 
the word ; they only hear of the feasts and dances next day, and 
of the scandals the day after to-morrow. AVith the latest rumors 
of the newest beauties, or the oldest wild dowagers, they make no 
acquaintance at first hand. They prefer Eegent Street and the 
shops, or murky Victoria Street and the "stores" to Piccadilly. 
Neither they, nor anyone else, is offended by the expression of a 
distaste for the great wen. Even born Londoners have no civic 
patriotism. You cannot expect a man to be proud of Bloomsbmy, 
or haughtily to announce that he was born in Bayswater. No poet 
now would write, like Spenser, 

" At length they all to merry London came, 
To merry London, my most kindly nurse, 
That to me gave this life's first native source." 

Bather would he think of London in De Quincey's mood, and speak 
of Piccadilly as a " stony-hearted stepmother." 



THE BOULEVARDS OF PARIS 
By Francisque Sarcey 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY G. JEANNIOT 




A B0ULEVABD1ER— ENGLISH T1TE. 






THE BOULEVARDS OF PARIS 

I. THE BOULEVARD— THE BOULEVAKDIERS 

IN every great capital there is some comer, some spot — a some- 
thing — a promenade, perhaps, where it gathers and concen- 
trates itself, as it were ; which is the centre of its moral ac- 
tivity, and, as we say nowadays, its characteristic. AVith us, that 
corner, that spot is the boulevard. I do not exactly mean that the 
boulevard is Paris; but surely, without the boulevard we should not 
understand Paris. 

I shall always remember one of the keenest emotions of my 
youth. I had been obliged, owing to my duties at the time, to 
banish myself to the provinces, where I had remained almost two 
years, confined within a small town. The hour came at last for me 
to return to Paris and once more to enter into its possession. 
Hardly had I deposited my trunk at the hotel, when I ran to the 
Madeleine and clambered on top of one of the omnibuses that ply 
along the line of the boulevards to the Bastille. I had no business 
at the Bastille, but I was almost crazy with joy at breathing, during 
the drive, that perfume of Parisian life which arises so strongly 
from the asphalt of the boulevard and the macadam of its roadway. 

It was evening, the gas-jets (for electricity was yet unknown) 
spangled the darkness with yellow lights ; the shops, all opened, 
shone brilliantly ; the crowd was strolling up and down the wide 



72 The Boulevards of Paris 

sidewalks. It was not one of those eager; breathless crowds that 
seem carried away in a vortex of business, such as one sees in Lon- 
don ; it was composed of loungers who seemed to be walking about 
for their pleasure, who were cheering to the sight, and diffused, as it 
were, a feeling of happiness in the air. From time to time the om- 
nibus passed before a theatre, where long lines of people were al- 
ready waiting for the opening of the box-office ; everybody was en- 
joying himself and laughing. As we descended toward the Bastille 
the passers-by became less numerous, the groups less compact, but 
there still remained the same air of happy animation. I do not 
know, but it seemed to me that the very atmosphere was lighter, 
more luminous ; it sparkled with youth and life ; I felt subtile 
fumes of gayety mounting to my brain, and I remember that I 
could not refrain from clapping my hands, to the great scandal 
of my neighbors, who thought that I was a little mad. " Ah ! 
how beautiful it is — the boulevard ! " I exclaimed, and I breathed 
deep draughts of that air charged with joyous and spiritual elec- 
tricity. 

I do not believe that strangers arriving in Paris are subject to 
such strong impressions. I have been able, however, to cpiestion 
some of them, and they have confessed to me that the sight of a 
population who felt it a happiness to live in their gayety, and who 
preserved an undefinable aspect of amiable elegance, had strongly 
affected them. This characteristic aspect of the Parisian boulevard 
had charmed them from the very first ; it was there that they had 
felt the heart of the great city beat. 

The boulevard ! You understand me ? I mean the boulevard 
that descends from the Madeleine to the Bastille. Under the 
Empire large streets were opened in Paris, to which, by analogy, 
the name of boulevards was given. But with us those boidevards 
do not count. There is but one boulevard, the one that our fathers 
and grandfathers have known, frequented, and loved. 

It used to be much more eiitertaiuin"' in their time than in ours. 




BOULEVARD DES 1TALIENS — A THOROUGH PARI5IENNE. 



74 The Boulevards of Paris 

Alas ! yes, I am old enough to have witnessed the transformation. 
Fifty or sixtj 7 years ago, Paris, then confined within the limits of its 
former walls, was, to tell the truth, only a very big small town. It 
had more character aud more physiognomy. The boulevard was 
less imposing, less solemn ; it did not flow uniformly between two 
rows of five-storied houses ; it met with accidents in its route. Ah ! 
who will give us again what was formerly known as the Boulevard 
du Crime ? where, in the neighborhood of the Ambigu-Comique, a 
collection of theatres formed a vast semicircle about a broad ojien 
place. 

What animation ! what gayety ! what jollity at six o'clock in the 
evening (that was then the hour of the play), when all the petits 
bourgeois used to pour in crowds from the transverse streets and 
form around the ten or twelve theatres crowded into a rather re- 
stricted space, interminable and shifting queues. The venders of 
liquorice water filled the air with their cries — d lafratcfie ! qui rent 
boire ? Upon handcarts were piled up pyramids of oranges and of 
barley-sugar. Street urchins ran along the lines, offering pro- 
grammes for sale. From every side came banter and laughter, and 
sometimes even pushes, under the paternal eye of the policeman. 

All that has disappeared — the ground cost too much ; every lot 
of it has been utilized by contractors, who have constructed enor- 
mous houses of six stories, where from top to bottom, from floor to 
floor, bustles a population which has perhaps lost its former bon- 
homie, even if it has preserved the same fund of wit and merriment. 

In those days the heart of the Parisian boulevard was the 
theatre of the Gymnase ; and, descending toward the Bastille, the 
Porte Saint-Martin, the Ambigu, the Boulevard du Crime, and 
beyond that the part which is now all built over, but which, in 
those days, offered picturesque promenades to the explorer of un- 
known and desert regions. But it is a constant law, observed in 
the increase of capitals, that they move with a slow and continuous 
movement toward the west. 



The Boulevards of Paris 



75 



The heart of the boulevard has changed its place little by little ; 
from the Gymnase to the Boulevard Montmartrs, then to the 
Boulevard des Ital- 
iens and the Boule- 
vard des Capucines. 
There it is to-day. 
For the Parisian, 
the boulevard in 
general comprises, 
if you like, the 
space from the 
Madeleine to the 
Bastille ; but that 
is merely, so to 
speak, a geograph- 
ical expression. 
The real boulevard, 
what is known in 
our slang as the 
boulevard, the bou- 
levard par excel- 
lence, is the one 
that stretches from 
the Opera to the 
rue Mont mart re. 
And even then, the true, the real boulevardier finds great diffi- 
culty in getting further in the direction of the Madeleine than the 
rue du Helder. It is this little space, says M. Victor Fournel, 
of not more than half a square kilometre, where are arrayed 
Tortoni's, the Cafe Anglais, and the Theatre des Varietes, that con- 
tains for the boulevardier all his native soil. Beyond is the un- 
known, the barbaric, " the provinces." 

The boulevard is the domain of the boulevardier, it is his salon ; 




TWO TVrES. 



76 The Boulevards of Paris 

he would like to drive away from it the .intruders — those who do 
not belong to his set. When the boulevardier travels ( he sometimes 
travels), he takes with him the dust of the boulevards on the soles 
of his shoes. He wanders about like a lost soul till he meets some- 
body, man or woman, who reminds him of his dear boulevard. 
Then he dilates and breathes more freely. 

At bottom this fluttering creature that bears the name of boule- 
vardier — a species, I must say, which is becoming rarer every day — 
is, notwithstanding his air of emancipation and scepticism, the 
veriest slave of routine. His life is ruled like music-paper. He 
saunters twice a day through his domain ; the first time before din- 
ner, from four to six o'clock; the second time from ten o'clock to 
midnight, or one o'clock in the morning, after the play. For noth- 
ing in the world would he fail in these habits. Besides, he has 
other obligations ; it is not permissible for him to miss a first night 
at the Varietes, the Vaudeville, the Gymnase, or the Ambigu. 
Finally, the true boulevardier could not dispense, whatever might be 
the state of his stomach, with a supper at impossible hours at the 
Cafe Eiche or at the Maison d'Or. Example : my excellent col- 
league and friend, Aurelien Scholl. 

He — he is the king of the boulevardiers ; he will probably be 
the last. After him, the species will doubtless disappear, a sjjecies 
of which he will have been the most brilliant specimen. Between 
ourselves, with the exception of him and a few others, the boule- 
vardier is a rather mediocre type of the esprit parisien. His great 
fault is that he is imbued with a sense of his intellectual and moral 
superiority over the rest of humanity. He has a word which is 
constantly recurring to his lips in conversation, and of which he 
makes immoderate use when he wishes to judge a man or an object, 
a book or a play. He says : " So-and-so is Parisian," or " Such and 
such a play is Parisian ; " or else, " It is very Parisian, what you 
are telling me ; Not a bit Parisian, so-and-so's novel ! " And ac- 
cording to the degree of Parisianism of the play, the novel, or the 



The Boulevards of Paris 



77 



author, they rise or fall in the consideration of the boulevardier. 
Nothing equals the esteem of the boulevardier for whatever is 
Parisian ; nothing equals his disdain for what is not. 

I write in the Annates Politique* et IAtteraires, a review which is 




THE BOULEVARD AT THE EASTLLLE. 

(A relay of horses— news-vender.) 

modelled somewhat on the plan of your American magazines, and 
which has obtained a great circulation in France. It has sixty 
thousand subscribers, an enormous number for our country ; but 
these subscribers almost all live in the provinces ; the review is not 
read on the boulevards. Accordingly, when I chance to speak of it 
to certain friends of mine among the boulevardiers, you shoidd see 
their disdainful faces. 



78 The Boulevards of Paris 

" Les Annales ? . . . Never heard of it ! " 

" But, you know, it has a circulation of sixty thousand." 

" Possibly, but it's not a Parisian journal." 

And they always hark back to that. To be Parisian or not to 
be, that is the question ! To their mind there are no good or bad 
books, absurd pleasantries, or witty sallies. There are Parisian 
plays, Parisian novels, a Parisian wit, a Parisian elegance. 

What may be the precise significance of that sempiternal adjec- 
tive, irritating and alluring, which is always flying about our boule- 
vards'? What is meant by Parisian ? It is a word that can be 
understood, but hardly analyzed. Parisian wit is like those theat- 
rical reviews of the year's events, which amuse the boulevard, and 
which would cause nobody to laugh outside of our city limits. In 
order to define Parisian wit, one of my colleagues made use, one 
day, of an ingenious comparison. 

He told how there was once made, at the gates of Blois, an ex- 
quisite cream which, tasted while it was fresh, left on the palate the 
sensation of a delicious sorbet. King Louis XV., who was given to 
good cheer, established postal relays from Blois to Versailles, that 
the cream might be brought quite fresh to his table. But exquisite 
as was the cream, it had the great fault of being unable to bear 
transportation. At the end of two hours it lost its aroma — that 
undefinable something which gave it its value. 

Now, Parisian charm, Parisian seductiveness, on the stage, in the 
newspaper, in books, or in conversation, are somewhat like' the 
cream of King Louis XV. Sipped on the spot, it is exquisite ; 
transported elsewhere, it gets sour. Modern science, like Louis 
XV., may invent new means of transportation, the spirit of Paris, 
the " cream " of Paris, cannot stand the voyage. And that is what 
lends to Paris itself its particular attraction. People go there to 
taste its froth, its cream, and its dainties. The trouble is that they 
bring with them, from all over the world, all sorts of exotic messes, 
spiced and violent, burning the palate, caviar or kari, red pepper 



The Boulevards of Paris 



79 



and pimento, which corrupt and alter our national cuisine. And 
thus it is that Parisian taste is beginning to go, and that the cream 

of Paris ac- 
quires little by 
little a vague 
odor of pale 
ale, of kiim- 
mel, and of 
whiskey. 

With his 
over - weening 
pretensions to 
wit, and espec- 
ially to Parisian wit, the 
boulevardier is often 1 tut 
a fool rubbed with the wit of 
the Figaro (which has not 
much left itself). Besides, 
he is almost invariably quite 
useless. Allow me to give 
you a broad sketch of the 
life of the boulevard ; you 
may infer from it exactly what 
may be the life of the boidevard- 
ier, and of how little value is that 
individual. 

Eight o'clock in the morning. — 
The boulevard is deserted ; a regi- 
ment of sweepers is making its toilet, cleaning its sidewalks, and 
putting everything in order for the afternoon. 

Nine o'clock. — The cafes open their doors ; the waiters, half 
asleep (for they went to bed at four o'clock in the morning), pile up 
pyramids of chairs before the doors, and wipe off with arm-strokes 




TI1E BOULEVARD AT G A.M. 

Inspector of highways, 
nnd sweepers. 



80 The Boulevards of Paris. 

the marble tables. The passers-by are rare. A few gentlemen of 
leisure, in soft felt hats, saunter slowly along while reading their 
newspaper. 

Half-past ten.— The boulevard begins to be animated. It is the 
hour of the aperitif : the cafes are rilled with drinkers sipping pale 
absinthe and black bitters. The restaurants are preparing the plat 
du jour : hot whiffs of cooking arise from the basement gratings 
and provoke the appetite. 

Midday. — Breakfast time ; the taverns, the breweries, the bouil- 
lons are crammed with people. The influential stock-brokers eat 
at the Cafe Anglais, or at Tortoni's. While they swallow their 
dozen oysters and their Chateaubriand aux poinm.es soufflees, their 
clerks, full of business, come and inform them of the latest quota- 
tions and jot down their orders. The men of letters and fashion- 
able chroniqueurs eat at the Maison d'Or or at the Cafe Riche, and 
talk the latest gossip. Strangers prefer to go to the Cafe de la Paix 
or to Paillard's ; finally the small fry of employees, bourgeois of 
modest means, and retired officers, crowd into the Bouillon Paiisien, 
into Zimmer's or Pousset's breweries. 

One o'clock. — You sip your coffee, you smoke your cigar. 

Two o'clock. — Nobody now, that is to say, no loungers. Every- 
one is attending to his business. The carriages, in an enormous but 
constantly interrupted torrent, have great difficulty in moving on the 
crowded roadway. 

•Four o'clock. — This is the hour of the newspaper, the most curi- 
ous, the most characteristic hour of the boulevard. There is then, 
as it were, a burst of fever, a renewal of activity. On days of im- 
portant events, one 1 is obliged to force one's way with elbows and 
even fists in order to obtain a sheet of paper at the kiosks, that are 
almost taken by storm. Even in the banality of everyday life, the 
boulevard assumes at the newspaper hour a peculiar aspect. The 
parcels of newspapers smelling of fresh ink are piled up before the 
kiosks-; the venders fold and unfold the sheets, the earners run 



J3lM»ttjf« 




BOULEVARD BEAU MA Kc 1IAIS— AN ACTRESS. 



82 The Boulevards of Paris. 

along the sidewalks, and the purchasers throw themselves with 
avidity upon the latest news. Ah ! those newspapers readers ! 
What a fine chapter might be devoted to them. They can be di- 
vided into several categories, all equally interesting. There are the 
hurried ones who glance at the despatches, the Bourse quotations, 
fold their sheet, and never open it again ; the gourmets, who slip the 
paper into their pocket without opening it, but with the intention 
of relishing it quietly, after dinner, with feet in slippers, before the 
fireplace ; the passionate ones, who always buy the same paper, the 
one that reflects their opinions ; the sceptics, who buy papers dia- 
metrically opposed to one another, and give themselves the malign 
pleasure of comparing them, and noting their contradictions. 

Six o'clock. — Time for a vermouth ; some play dominoes. This 
used to be the hour when in certain cafes men of letters and artists 
were wont to meet and gossip about the topics of the day. Thus 
were organized small associations, half closed to outsiders, some of 
which have become famous. Those customs have disappeared. 
Life nowadays is too busy to allow one to spend all one's time in 
trifling and conversing. There are no more divans, reunions where 
one used to meet in the back room of some bier-house or fashion- 
able cafe, men of wit talking for their own pleasure, or for the 
amusement of the gallery. The boulevardier is reduced now to 
drinking his absinthe or his vermouth alone, watching for amuse- 
ment the ceaseless current of loungers and of original and exotic 
figures that stroll up and down the boulevard. 

At seven o'clock or half-past seven, dinner. Paris is, of all cities, 
the second city where one can, according to whim, eat the dearest 
or the cheapest. But on the boulevards there is little choice ; the 
rents are so enormous that they oblige the managers of the restau- 
rants to maintain very high prices. Foreigners, beware ! You are 
exploited in Paris just as we are probably pounced upon in New 
York. Capitals have nothing to learn from one another in that 
respect. 



The Boulevards of Paris. 



83 



Nine o'clock. — You go to the theatre, smoking your cigar, while 
speculators on the Bourse crowd into the vast hall of the Credit 
Foncier and cry out with much 
noise the morrow's operations. It 
is what is called the petite Bourse 
du soir. 

Midnight. — The theatres close. 
This is the time when the aspect 
of the boulevards is most varied. 
All classes of society mingle, el- 
bowing and pushing one another. 
Ladies from the Faubourg Saiut- 
Germain alight from their coupes, 
and stop for a cup of chocolate at 
Tortoni's ; on the sidewalk they 
run against "night beauties," 
women with painted faces who 
ogle at belated provincials ; club- 
men with collars turned up and 
a cigar between their lips, turn 
their steps toward the clubs, 
where they intend to in 
dulge in a game of bac- 
carat. The dramatic 
critics rush to their faf^^oV^ 
newspapers in or- 
der to improvise their accounts of 
the play. And conspicuous above 
the incongruous throng, a legion of ragged hawkers, whom we call 
camelols, echo one another's voices on the boulevards, howling ob- 
scene titles, proffering to the public ignoble papers fidl of nastiness 
and slanders. This one of the worst offences of Paris, this deluge of 
filthy publications which are cried out with impunity in our streets 




A TYPE OF JOURNALIST. 



84 The Boulevards of Paris 

without the police daring to interfere. All reputations are assaulted 
in them ; the most honorable men are dragged into the mire. 

— Ask for the scandal about M. Eouvier ! 

— See the truth about the jobbery of M. Jules Ferry ! 

— Eead the private life of Leo the Xlllth ! 

All this you hear cried out at the street crossings. These re- 
pugnant pamphlets are thrust under your eyes and bawled into your 
ears. Professional " barkers " of defiled sheets soil with their com- 
mentaries the ministers of yesterday and those of to-morrow. And 
the mob hears, listens to, is influenced by such infamous d< 'lations. 
And any foreigner who were to take literally, from the rue du 
Helder to the rue Moutmartre, all that is howled there of disgust- 
ing nonsense, would wonder where France had come to, and what 
sort of a nation it was that allowed evildoers to distribute placards 
in which the most respectable of its public men and functionaries 
were thus freely scoffed at. 

One o'clock. — People sup, or rather used to sup. For the late 
supper is tending to disappear from our customs. Under the Em- 
pire, our gilded youth were wont to assemble in certain " high life " 
restaurants, toward one o'clock in the morning, with women who 
were not all of the first order. They would get tipsy on champagne, 
and it was the thing to break a great deal of crockery. Certain sup- 
per parties in the "big sixteen " of the Cafe Anglais are legendary. 
One could sup, however, with less expense and less rumpus in other 
establishments, where could always be found numerous and gallant 
company. These establishments seem, since the siege, to have lost 
their clients, both men and women, either because these have less 
money to spend, or because they have become more reasonable. 
Fashionable young men now pass their nights at the club, while 
others go virtuously to bed ! There are still noctambulists in Paris, 
but they are becoming rarer and rarer. 

At three o'clock the boulevard is at rest. It is almost deserted ; 
no more carriages ; here and there a belated wayfarer regaining his 




•fe-,«...'X- 



BOtXEVARD ST. MARTIN. 



86 The Boulevards of Paris 

home, whose steps resound on the asphalt ; or some drunkard who 
is dozing hidden behind a tree, while the policemen silently stride 
along the sidewalk. At that hour life begins to awaken at the 
Halles. 

We have had a bird's-eye view of the boulevard. Let us now 
pass to details. Let us take a walk, glancing, as we pass by, at the 
shops, the monuments, the restaurants, and the cafes. 

The restaurant is one of the glories of our Paris. 

II. THE CAFES AND THE RESTAURANTS. 

We are very proud, we French, of our cooking ; we consider it 
the best in the world, and this opinion must be founded on fact, 
since the sovereigns of Europe, as well as the millionaires of 
America, borrow our cooks and follow our receipts. 

Therefore let us set forth, starting from the church of the Made- 
leine, and advance at a leisurely pace, without hurrying, like good 
bourgeois to whom the doctor has recommended exercise. 

Here is the Grand Cafe. It is an immense establishment, lux- 
urious, gilded on all sides, ornamented with paintings, and fur- 
nished with softly cushioned seats. In the hall that runs along the 
boulevard stay the peaceful folk who write their correspondence or 
read the papers while sipping their absinthe. In the rear opens 
an immense gallery specially appropriated to billiard players ; 
there every day famous professors come for practice, the illustrious 
Vignaux, the no less celebrated Slosson, his emulator and his rival ; 
the one phlegmatic, slow, and methodical ; the other nervous and 
quick as gunpowder. 

The interest in billiards with us is beginning to abate ; but a 
few years ago it used to be a rage, a furor. Whenever a match 
was going on between two great champions, an enormous crowd 
would station itself in front of the cafe and greet the victor's name 
with exclamations or vociferations, according as he belonged to our 



The Boulevards of Paris 



J7 



country or to another. Bets were exchanged, and sometimes dis- 
cussions degenerated into fights. 

One evening, I remember, toward 1886, I was returning from 
the theatre. I 
was preparing to 
cross the boule- 
vard, when I saw 
from afar a great 
gathering, heard 
loud shouts, and 
saw hats thrown 
in t h e a i r . 
"What is it? Is 
the Opera house 
on fire ? Has the 
President of the 
Republic been 
assassinated ? " 

An individual 
who was passing 
by gazed at me 
with an air of 
pity. 

" Don't y o u 
know the great news? " he said. " Yignaux is a good first ! " 

And from the glance which he threw me, as he noticed my 
moderate enthusiasm, I felt that this patriot held me in low esteem. 

While the Grand Cafe is frequented by the billiard-players, the 
Cafe de la Paix has as customers the elegant and wealthy young 
men of Paris, those whom we call in our slang gommeux, pschut- 
teux, becarre (for every year we coin some new word). Toward 
five o'clock they arrive, irreproachably gloved, with wide shirt 
fronts, spick and span, wearing dazzling silk hats, and toying with 




NEWSBOYS UN THE BOl'LEYARD I)ES CAPL'CINES. 



8S The Boulevards of Paris 

silver-handled sticks. When the temperature is not too cool, they 
sit out in the open, on the terrace, order a vermouth or a sherry 
cobbler, and stare motionless, without saying a word, at the Pari- 
siennes hurrying by. 

The Cafe de la Paix is one of the most prosperous in Paris ; 
all those who have managed it have made fortunes and have re- 
tired, at the end of a few years, with pretty savings. One day, 
when I was diuing there with a friend (you dine well, but your 
purse suffers), I noticed a very solemn gentleman who was moving 
about between the tables, scrutinizing everything with the eye of a 
master, and reprimanding the waiters. 

" You see that personage ? " said my friend. 

" Yes ; undoubtedly he's the patron." 

" Perfectly. Do you know what the amount of his fortune is ? " 

" I confess that I don't." 

" He enjoys an annual income of five hundred thousand francs.-" 

" That's a very pretty sum ! And doesn't he consider himself 
rich enough yet ? Does he continue to work ? " 

" His story is curious, and I'll tell it to you. Five years ago, 
he wished to retire. He had begun as a scullion in a low eating- 
house ; when he found himself master of several millions he re- 
solved to amuse himself and have a good time. He sold the Cafe 
de la Paix, bought a superb hotel in Paris, a fine chateau in the 
provinces, surrounded himself with servants, and for a few weeks 
imagined that he was the happiest man in the world. Before long 
he changed his mind." 

" Really ? " 

" You will see. The good man had pluckily toiled all his life, 
he had never had time to occupy himself with anything but his 
kitchen ; he was entirely illiterate, and his wife was hardly better 
educated than he. They had no taste either for reading, the thea- 
tre, or the museums ; they had nothing to do ; the days began to 
seem to them cruelly long — in short, they were soon bored to 



The Boulevards of Paris 



89 



death. They tried to make friends, but they were ashamed to 
seek for them iu their former class, in the class of cooks and scul- 
lery boys. On the other hand, the real bourgeois found no pleas- 
ure in associating with vulgar and unpolished upstarts. Our 
friend and his wife gave exquisite dinners to which nobody came. 



. 



m ^ j 



A-iL -'■■'-■■■' '*r-'~ -ft 



| 





LE CARBEFUUR DES ECRASES. 

(Boulevard Montmartre.) 

They proffered courtesies which nobody returned. At the end of 
a few months of this mode of life, the restaurateur and his wife 
could stand it no longer : ' I have enough of it,' he said to his 
better half. ' I feel that I am pining away — I am losing my appe- 
tite — I can no longer sleep — I cannot exist without work. I am 
going to buy back the Cafe de la Paix.' He bought it back, and 



90 The Boulevards of Paris. 

immediately, with, work, lie recovered his health arid spirits. You 
. see him from here. What activity ! What animation ! He is 
now making his eleventh million." 

" And what will he do with his money ? " 

" Have no care ; he has a son of fifteen who will soon under- 
take to squander it with actresses and ladies of easy morals." 

And while I am speaking of these ladies, I will show you in 
passing the cafe where they most do gather— the Cafe Peters, next 
to the Vaudeville — every night at midnight, after the theatre, they 
ascend to the first floor, where they wait for Fortune to appear to 
them in the shape of a wealthy foreigner. 

But enough of that. Let us throw a thankful glance at the 
Cafe Napolitain, where you get the best water-ices in Paris, at the 
restaurant Paillard, whose mcutre d'hotel, Joseph, had the honor of 
serving for a year your richissime Mr. Vanderbilt, and let us come 
at once to one of our oldest and most celebrated cafes — the Cafe 
Tortoni. 

Tortoni ! The name does not suggest much to you, but to us 
Parisians it is full of reminiscences. I have said that this estab- 
lishment is one of the oldest in Paris. It was founded in 1798 by 
two Italians, Valloni and Tortoni. It soon became fashionable ; 
gentlemen of the long robe and functionaries frequented it. 
Among the habitues was a lawyer named Spolor, whose skill at 
billiards was surprising. Prince Talleyrand had such pleasure in 
seeing Spolor play, he felt such confidence in his game, that he in- 
vited him one day to his house and presented him to one of his 
friends, the general receiver for the department of the Vosges, also 
a great billiard-player, and very proud of his talent. A bet was 
made, a solemn match was engaged between Spolor and the re- 
ceiver, who lost in a few hours forty thousand francs. . . . You 
see that it is sometimes useful to know how to play billiards. 

One of the most curious types of the Cafe Tortoni was Pievost, 
one of the waiters, whose spine was as supple as his conscience, and 



The Boulevards of Paris 91 

who never approached you unless bowed to the ground, and asking 
in his softest tones : 

" Pardon rne ! A thousand pardons ! Is monsieur good 
enough to desire anything '? " 

It was exquisite. What was no less so — to him — was that in 
giving change he kept the best part of it for himself ; if detected 
by chance he had but to repeat : 

" Pardon me ! pardon me ! a thousand pardons ! " 

Nowadays the Cafe Tortoni is no longer haunted by diplomats 
like Talleyrand, but by journalists and men of letters. Toward six 
o'clock are found now and then gathered around its tables a few 
men of wit : Albert Wolff, Emile Blavet, Henry Fouquier, and 
finally Aurelien Scholl, the most brilliant talker of Paris. 

Seholl is the living incarnation of what we call French wit — a 
wit made of lightness, of fantasy, and also of sarcasm. Seholl's 
bite is cruel ; it is imprudent to irritate him, for sooner or later he 
wreaks his revenge, and as he handles the sword with rare skill, he 
is as dangerous on the field as in the newspaper. 

If a propos of the boulevard I speak to you of Aurelien Scholl, 
it is because both are intimately related. The boulevard would not 
exist without Aurelien Scholl ; Scholl could not live without the 
boulevard. He passes his whole existence on the boulevard ; he 
lounges, he smokes his cigar, he converses, he breakfasts, he sups 
(andsups well, too) on the boulevard. For this Parisian is gifted 
with a formidable appetite, and wields the best fork I know. 

Recently I had occasion to make a little trip with him. IVe 
had gone, with a few brethren of the press, to hear, at Nice, Glinka's 
" Life for the Tzar," on the invitation of the impresario Gunsbourg. 
We tarried there eight days, and I can say, without exaggeration, 
that those eight days were spent in eating. The table was con- 
stantly set, and what a table ! Twelve dishes at every meal, gener- 
ous wines, and fine liqueurs. 

When we departed we were all ill, our stomachs were on fire, 



92 



The Boulevards of Paris 












SUNDAY, ON THE BOULEVARD DU TEMPLE. 

(" Where shall we dine ? ") 



and. when we got into the cars, after a last breakfast more copious 
even than the others, we heaved a sigh of relief. At last we were 
to be allowed to fast for a few hours ! Scholl was with us. as 1 



The Boulevards of Paris 93 

said, and was lugging an enormous valise. Hardly had the train 
set forth, than Scholl opened his valise and pulled forth, with the 
most perfect equanimity, a pile of sandwiches and a bottle of pale 
ale. We stared at him with stupefaction. 

" What are you going to do with these provisions ? " I asked of 
him. 

" Why, absorb them, with your permission." 

" We have just risen from breakfast." 

" Nothing makes me feel so hollow as a railroad journey." 

It must be that the boulevard makes Aurelien Scholl feel quite 
as hollow, for he treats himself every night, so I am told, to a won- 
derful supper at the Cafe Riche or at the Cafe Anglais. The wait- 
ers in these establishments qiiake before him ( Scholl is very diffi- 
cult to please and falls into a violent rage if his roast beef a la 
Chdteaubriand is not cooked to the right point), and relieve him of 
his cane and hat with all the demonstrations of humility and re- 
spect. 

I mentioned a moment ago the Cafe Anglais. This world-re- 
nowned establishment is situated on the Boulevard des Italiens, 
next to the former Opera-Comique. It is nowadays somewhat 
neglected by young and elegant society, and is especially frequented 
by great financiers, by a set of money-changers and bankers. But 
in old times, thirty or forty years ago, with what splendor shone the 
Cafe Anglais ! and how many memories cling to it ! The dining- 
room of the first floor, the " big sixteen " of which I was telling you 
a moment ago, has seen all the gentlemen, all the high livers, all the 
celebrated artists of France and foreign 1 countries pass through it. 

But let us go on. Here is the Maison d'Or, where our great 
novelist, Alexandre Dumas the elder, elected for more than a year 
his residence. Here is Brebant's, which, during the siege of Paris 
in 1871, found means, notwithstanding the scarcity of provisions, to 
furnish its clients with varied dishes, and even with white bread. 
Here is Desire Beaurain's, where you can eat excellent bouilla- 



The Boulevards of Paris 95 

baisse ; here is the Cafe Marguery, the Cafe Prevost, and finally, at 
the other extremity, toward the Bastille, the famous Cafe Turc, 
where, for my part, I have never seen a Turk, but only a crescent 
that is figured above the entrance, and thus justified the name of 
the cafe. 

III. THE SHOPS OF THE BOULEVARD. 

You may well imagine that my intention is not to describe in 
detail all the shops that line the boulevard. A volume would not 
suffice; besides I know them very imperfectly, as I enter them as 
little as possible and prefer to stay at home. But I wish to speak 
of a few great merchants whose celebrity is European and who 
participate in the beautifying of our favorite promenade. 

In the first rank, I should mention the confectioner Boissier. 
During eleven months of the year his richly painted shop is fairly 
quiet and almost deserted ; but from the first of December an im- 
mense crowd invades it, and it is impossible to move and secure at- 
tention. Two confectioners thus divide fashionable custom : Mar- 
ojuis for chocolates, Boissier for bonbons. Is it that sweets from 
them are any better than from the corner grocer's ? I would not 
dare affirm it ; it is the name' that is sought for. A gentleman 
could not decently offer a woman of the world a bag of comfits that 
came from any other place than Boissier's. Fashion and vanity 
preclude it. You make a present of a box signed Boissier, it proves 
that you have paid very dear for it, that you have not looked at ex- 
pense ; your reputation for gallantry is saved. 

You are not ignorant of the influence that a pretty woman's 
eyes can exert over a purchaser. How resist the charm of a gra- 
cious smile ? How put aside the object proffered by a white and 
dimpled hand ? The manager of the Maison Boissier, who kens 
the weaknesses of the Iranian heart, is careful to engage, during the 
holiday season, a whole regiment of pleasing damsels who bewitch 
the public. These poor girls deserve some credit for preserving 



96 The Boulevards of Paris 

their spirits and gayety, for during two weeks they enjoy but a few 
hours of rest. All day long they wait on customers ; in the even- 
ing they make up parcels and place inside the boxes the visiting 
cards which they have received. 

This work is of the most delicate kind. A moment of distrac- 
tion, of thoughtlessness, may occasion catastrophes. Last year one 
of my friends, married to a very jealous woman, had gone into 
Boissier's to purchase his Christmas presents. He chose two bon- 
bonnieres, one for his wife, the other for Mile. Z., a charming ac- 
tress of the Theatre Francais ; he left in care of the saleswoman 
two cards, each with a dedicatory inscription. The poor girl was 
clumsy enough to make so bad a mistake that the next morning the 
actress received the present intended for the wife, and the wife re- 
ceived the gift intended for the actress. I need not dwell on the 
scene that ensued. My friend implored for pardon on both knees, 
he tore out his hair with despair. The outraged spouse was inflex- 
ible and sued for divorce. The most comical part of the adventure 
was that the unfortunate, rebuffed by the rigor of his wife, fled to 
the actress for consolation, and that the latter closed her door on 
him, accusing him of having deceived her. What disasters may a 
box of bonbons cause ! 

But let us leave Boissier's and pursue our way. Hardly have 
we taken a few steps before a succulent odor of truffles, an agree- 
able smell of cooking, rises to our nostrils. We stand before the 
establishment of Potel <fe Chabot. The shop presents nothing ex- 
traordinary, it is modest and almost mean ; it contains a few appe- 
tizing fowls and some fine fruit. Yet an equipage stops at the door. 
A busy -looking man alights ; he enters the shop and addresses the 
•patron, an imposing personage in white vest and cook's cap. 

" Monsieur," he says, " I have had an accident. I am to have 
thirty people to dinner at once, and my chef has just fallen ill. 
Can you prepare immediately a dinner of thirty covers ? You have 
three-quarters of an hour to do it in." 



The Boulevards of Paris 97 

" All right, your dinner will be ready." 

The house of Potel & Chabot is a vast factory ; it gives employ- 
ment to hundreds of cooks who toil night and day. Last year, 
when the President of the Republic gave a banquet to the twenty- 
four thousand mayors of France, he turned to Potel & Chabot, and 
that gigantic dinner for twenty-four thousand guests was served 
without the slightest mishap. 

Let us go on, passing before the superb palace of the Credit 
Lyomiaise, and stop at the " Librairie Nouvelle." This is a most 
interesting little corner, especially in summer, when all our boule- 
vardiers arc dispersed to the four winds of heaven. When they re- 
turn to Paris, between two trips, be it but for three horns, they stop 
at the Librairie Nouvelle, and within five minutes they are up with 
all that is said, with all that is written in the great city. Li the 
broad daylight of that shop is published an oral chronicle that sav- 
ors all the gossip of the reporters. The woman of the world, be- 
fore starting on her travels, alights from her coupe, inspects the 
new volumes, chooses one and takes it off to Dieppe or to Trou- 
ville. The apprentice-actress, fresh from the Conservatoire, comes 
in a straw hat to buy the last monol< igue which she intends to re- 
cite before the sea-side bathers. 

A few years ago the manager of the Librairie Nouvelle was 
Achille, a charming fellow, gifted with an astonishing memory, very 
well up in contemporary literature, and the Providence of men of 
letters and journalists. Had you any information to ask, Achille 
was always ready — he allowed himself to be consulted as you would 
run over the leaves of a dictionary. And if, by chance, he hesi- 
tated, you would see rise from one of the corners of the shop a little 
old man full of amiability, who came to your rescue with a smile on 
his lips. This old man was named, and is still named, Gustave 
Claudin. He is the man in France who knows the most Parisians 
and Parisiennes — I mean Parisians and Parisiennes of note. His 
reminiscences are a mine where all the chroniclers have delved. 



98 The Boulevards of Paris 

It was from him that Jules Claretie had the following anecdote 
about Blanche d'Antigny : 

One day this merry singer, whose talent was contestable but 
whose beauty was marvellous, comes into the Librairie Nouvelle 
and asks for the " Becits merovingiens," the erudite work of Au- 
gustin Thierry. 

" And why, grands dieux ? " asks Claudia. 

" Why ? Because the composer, Herve, has given me the chief 
role in his opera bouffe ' Chilperic,' and I want to enter dans la 
peau du personnage." 

Blanche d'Antigny reading the " Becits merovingiens " to 
create a role in an operetta ! It is one of those purely Parisian 
ironies which we can note in passing, but could not invent. 

But I must limit mj^self ; I cannot tarry so long before all the 
celebrated shops which, in this region of the boulevard, might 
claim my attention. I must content myself with noticing briefly 
Barbedienne, the dealer in bronzes, whose shop contains the most 
jjerfect masterpieces of contemporary sculpture (M. Barbedienne, 
who carries his eighty years lightly, and possesses a respectable 
number of millions, began life as a paper-hanger) ; the Menagere, 
a great bazaar known all over the world, where may be found as- 
sembled all the objects necessary in everyday life. Here are other 
shops of less importance, but more picturesque — like the baker of 
brioches of the rue de la Lime, whose golden cakes are the delight 
of students and saleswomen. 

I come at last to the ultimate regions of the boulevard, on the 
other side of the Chateau d'Eau ; to the Boulevards du Teruple and 
des Filles du Calvaire. This quarter used to be exceedingly curi- 
ous, filled with dealers in antiquities and bric-a-brac. Whenever I 
happened to pass there in the days of my youth, I used to stop 
before those tempting shops where, hidden beneath the dust, were 
to be found inestimable treasures which the meagreness of my 
purse would not let me purchase. 



The Boulevards of Paris. 99 

The most astonishing of these shops was that of Mother 
Vidalenq. Ah ! Mother Vidalenq ! what memories that name sug- 
gests ! She was a little old woman, coquettishly clad in a dress of 
pure silk with shoulder-of-mutton sleeves, and crowned with a cap 
which seemed at first sight very simple, but was lined with lace of 
ii fabulous price. She would receive you with an affable smile, 
with somewhat mincing graces, and allow you to glance over her 
treasures. And what treasures ! Flemish tapestries with figures, 
pieces of ancient brocade ; beds of all epochs and all styles, a la 
duchesse, a la polonaise : adorably carved arm-chairs, arm-chairs a 
poche, a cartouche, en, cabriolet, a confessionnal. 

Mother Vidalenq is dead now, and in her newly painted shop is 
established the industry of a, Jin <lc siecle cobbler, who soles shoes in 
thirty minutes for the modest sum of one franc. 

This sketch would be incomplete were I not to say a word of 
what we call here the New Year's "barracks c baroques' du June de 
fan):' 

Every year about the 16th of December Paris is metamorphosed 
into a vast toy-fair which lasts a full month. From the Bastille to 
the Madeleine, all along the boulevards, stretches a double row of 
booths made of planking, a mere space wide or high, where are re- 
tailed all those things that can excite the cupidity of children. 
One-half of Paris descends into the street to sell to the other half 
mountains of jumping-jacks, pyramids of Punches, and myriads of 
dolls. For thirty consecutive days you hear floating over the great 
city an infernal concert, where rattle and pipe play their part, and 
the penny trumpet mingles its shrill cry with the beating of 
drums. 

How few people realize, as Victor Fournel has ingeniously said, 
at how many points of contact the world of dolls is related to the 
world of the living ! The doll-fair is like an immense emptying 
place into which flow, like rivers into the sea, all the characters and 



ioo The Boulevards of Paris 

events with, which, the chroniclers have • busied themselves in the 
course of the year. All the cast-off costumes of contemporary com- 
edy are hung up in the dressing-room. It is with bits of politics, 
with national traits, and with fragments of history that the puppets 
that amuse the children are made up. I should be much aston- 
ished if General Boulanger did not play his little role this year iu 
the thirteen-sou shops. 

The toy-fair occupies, as I have said, the whole of the boulevard 
from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and it reflects by turns the polit- 
ical opinions of the quarters which it traverses. Here we find the 
reactionary toys, there the republican, democratic, and socialist 
toys. On the Boulevard des Capucines (the wealthy quarter) are 
exhibited, in fine satin-lined boxes, luxurious diuuer-sets, and dolls 
that smile disdainfully. On the Boulevard du Temple you are of- 
fered pasteboard images of the Republic, wearing the Phrygian cap 
and clad in scarlet. " Tell me whom you frequent, and I'll tell you 
who yori are," affirms the old proverb ; tell me what toys you buy 
for your son, and I'll tell you what your political opinion is. 

All this agitation lasts three weeks. On the morning of the 
10th of January the little booths are emptied, unhinged, carried off 
I know not where ; and the same evening the boulevard, after a 
gigantic sweeping, resumes its accustomed aspect. 

IV. THE THEATRES. 

I COULD not end this monograph of the boulevards without 
speaking of the theatres. The theatre is intimately related to Pari- 
sian life. It is as impossible to imagine Paris without theatres as 
a man without a head. There are twelve of them on the boule- 
vards only : the Oj>era, the Nouveairtes, the Vaudeville, the Varie- 
tes, the Gymnase, the Renaissance, the Porte Saint-Martin, the 
Ambigu, the Folies Dramatiques, Dejazet, the Cirque d'Hiver, and 
Beaumarchais. 




IN' FKONT OP THE THEATKE i)E3 VAluETES— BETWEEN THE ACTS. 



The Boulevards of Paris 103 

Honor to whom honor is due. Let us begin with the Opera. 
I need not describe the admirable monument erected by Charles 
Gamier. Most of those who will read these lines know it, either 
from having seen it in nature, or through the photograph. It is 
certainly the most beautiful theatre in the world. None can be 
compared to it for the harmony of its proportions, the richness of 
its details, and the perfect taste of its decorations. The audi- 
torium is a marvel of luxury and comfort, the stage is of colossal 
dimensions. 

It is not an easy task, that of director of the Opera. It recpiires 
a versatility, a skill, a sentiment for art, a knowledge of business 
which are in most men incompatible. MM. liitt and Graillard have 
enriched themselves, it is said. They arc accused of having been 
false to the interests of art. Their predecessor, M. Vaucorbeil, had 
ruined himself — hi- was accused of a lack of practical sense. 

Poor Vaucorbeil was, unfortunately for himself, a timid man. 
You smile at this. A timid director of the Opera is improbable. 
Yet it is true. Vaucorbeil was modest and timorous; he submitted 
to the will of his artists instead of imposing his own. It was to 
him that there happened the comical adventure which a Parisian 
chroniqueur has noted in one of his books. 

One day the members of the chorus, who had long been asking 
higher salaries, declared to Vaucorbeil that they were quite willing 
to sing, but that they did not intend to make the gestures of their 
roles. 

"What is it?" exclaimed Vaucorbeil ; "I do not quite under- 
stand." 

(The fact is that their claims — inadmissible, of course — ivere 
difficult to understand.) 

" Yet it is very simple," answered a delegate of the chorus. 
" We are lyric artists. We are engaged to sing — we will sing — 
make us sing. But for the gestures, engage supernumeraries who 
■will perform that pantomime. To each his rank." 



104 The Boulevards of Paris 

This question of gesture, which became for Vaucorbeil a seri- 
ous subject of worry, puts me in mind of a charming witticism of 
Labiche, our celebrated dramatic author. He was presiding one 
day oyer a literary committee. His two colleagues — Henri de Bor- 
nier and Pailleron — had almost simultaneously asked for the floor 
to treat the question in order. 

As Pailleron was beginning to speak first, Bornier, all of a sud- 
den, with his Southern petulance, cried out : 

" But, Monsieur le president — but it is precisely my proposition 
that M. Pailleron is developing ! " 

Then Labiche, with most admirable coolness, answered, smiline : 

" "Well, then, my friend, do you make the gestures." 

Here is the Vaudeville, where just now there is being played 
" Le Depute Loiseau," an ironical and satirical comedy by Jules 
Lemaitre, one of our brilliant colleagiies in dramatic criticism. 
Here is the Nouveautes — a theatre of more recent foundation, 
which is struggling with difficulty against the indifference of the 
public. Here is the Varietes. 

Here I must stop a moment. This stage, one of the smallest in 
Paris, constructed in 1806, has contributed a brilliant lustre to the 
history of contemporary dramatic art. The theatre of the Varie- 
tes has played most of the master-pieces of Offenbach and of Meil- 
hac and Halevy. Its troupe is excellent; it comprises such artists 
as Dupuis, Baron, Bairn oud, Germain. During three years Mine. 
Judic shone in the first rank ; she is to-day replaced by Mile. Be- 
jane, who is one of our superior actresses. 

Madame Judic, whose name is so well known in the United 
States, has never passed here as a comedienne of the first order ; 
but she is an exquisite genre songstress ; she excells in chauso- 
nettes and light corqilets. It was not at the first attempt and with- 
out effort that she attained to fame. Her debut was very humble. 
She was vegetating unknown in the troupe of a suburban theatre ; 
nobody had faith in her future, but she ventured in a concert to 



The Boulevards of Paris 105 

sing a ballad entitled " La premiere feuille." Her voice was as 
timorous as her looks — as her gestures. There was in all the per- 
son of the young girl a modest grace which was exquisitely se- 
ductive. 

Espoir, amour, 

Je suis la premiere feuille, 

Boujour ! 

Charming was this bonjour, said in a caressing voice, with a little 
beseeching smile. Anna Judic was engaged at the Eldorado. And 
thus began the career of the popular actress, who, twenty years 
later, was to gain so many dollars in America. 

From the Varietes let us pass to the Gymnase. How many 
reminiscences I might evoke about this theatre, were not my space 
limited ! From the point of view of literary influence, it is the 
second theatre in Paris, coming immediately after the Comedie 
Francaise. It is here that a great part of Scribe's plays and all 
the first works of Alexandre Dumas fils have been presented. It 
has given a start to a legion of great comedians : Geoffroy, Le- 
sueur, Dupuis, Berton the elder, Mile. Desclee, Mme. Cheri Mon- 
tiguy, Mme. Pasca. It continues, under the direction of M. Hon- 
ing, to keep its honorable rank. 

I will pass rapidly over the Renaissance, a theatre of modem 
construction, whose history does not present much interest, and I 
will come to the Porte Saint-Martin, where now Mile. Sarah Bern- 
hardt is enthroned. 

I suppose that the newspapers have often told you of that 
artiste, whose agitated life is a matter of legend. For three-quar- 
ters of the year she travels about the world ; for three months she 
returns to Paris, not in order to rest, but to play some new piece 
which she afterward exhibits beyond seas. 

In this vagabond life she has spent somewhat of her admirable 
talent. If she had remained at the Comedie Francaise, if she had 
reserved her strength for the interpretation of our masterpieces, 



106 The Boulevards of Paris 

she would have been, with Eachel, the greatest tragedienne of this 
century. She has succumbed to the temptation of making money ; 
she has overworked herself, wearied herself. However, this wom- 
an, so frail in appearance, supports fatigue with superhuman 
courage. And sometimes, would you believe it ? in the midst of 
her wandering existence she is bored. So at least affirms one of 
her biographers, Jules Claretie, and he tells the following anecdote, 
which I reproduce with pleasure. 

One day she was rehearsing "Frou-Frou." She was sitting, 
waiting for her cue, behind a side scene, surrounded by a group 
that adored her, was subjected by her charm, and deplored her 
vagaries. All of a sudden, a propos of nothing, she arose and said 
to somebody — author or comedian, I forget : 

" Ah ! what a life ! what a life ! It is astonishing how bored I 
am. 

" Diable ! you are difficult to please," was answered. " There 
is no existence in our times that can be compared to yours.. One 
must go back to a tzarina like Catherine II. to find a woman who 
has been obeyed, admired, acclaimed, and adored like you. Of 
what could you well complain ? " 

Sarah remained pensive, but she smiled and said : " It is true, 
I am very exacting ! " Then suddenly, becoming serious : 

" Yes, it is all very fine ! But the end ? Ah ! the end ! The 
thing is to end well ! The climax should be dramatic and stirring ! 
Suppose that Rochefort — whose death I do not wish, understand 
me — had been killed by a bullet at the moment of his escape ! 
What an admirable death ! There is a climax ! A fine fifth act ! I 
should like to end that way ! Gambetta ended well — drama, mys- 
tery. Come, tell me, how do you think I shall end ? " 

Nobody answered. 

There were many pensees de derriere la tete, to use Sainte- 
Beuve's expression, in the glances that were exchanged behind 
Sarah, close to the side scene. Then a very young comedian, 



The Boulevards of Paris 107 

almost a supernumerary, who played in "Frou Frou" ao insignifi- 
cant role, that of a domestic, shrugged his shoulders and answered 
his directress — his directress ! — with the thick and mocking accent 
of the Paris street-boys. 

" You ? How you will end, you ? It isn't hard to guess ! You 
will end as a box-opener ! " 

And do you think that Sarah got angry with her pupil ? Well, 
I should say so ! She burst into laughter. She found the answer 
amusing. Box-opener ! . . . Guvroche, va .' She must have 
told the story herself. 

She was always ready to laugh at everything. In her dressing- 
room, the money which she received daily evaporated like gold dis- 
solved by aqua regia. There went on, between the acts, on the 
nail, as it were, a daily distribution of her salary by fractions, by 
hundreds and twenties of francs. Her fifteen hundred francs 
would be brought to her. Quick the pillage, the division, the 

quarry ! Poor woman : . . . " This for you, Madame G ! 

A bouquet to be paid for. Good! . . . Here! take this, 
you ! Cany it to the hair-dresser ! Ah ! an instalment to X — 

. . . So much to Z ! . . . Good! . . . What else? 

. . . T has written this morning. I send him this, he'll 

have to be patient." . . . And still laughing : " What is left me 
now ? Fifteen francs ! Bah ! with fifteen francs one need not starve ! 
But get change for this five-franc piece, I need it for the carriage ! " 
And a similar scene was enacted almost nightly in Sarah's 
dressing-room. 

Close to the Porte Saint-Martin arises the Ambigu theatre, where 
are successfully played blood-and-thunder dramas in which vice is 
always punished and virtue rewarded. A little further we find the 
Folies Dramatiques, resounding every day with merry tunes. Fi- 
nally, the Theatre Dejazet and the Theatre Beaumarchais end the 
list ; they are both very far from the centre, and elegant Parisians 
hesitate to venture into these desert wastes. 



108 The Boulevards of Paris 

I have finished my walk. I have attempted in these few pages 
to give you an idea of the boulevards. Have I succeeded? I 
hardly flatter myself that I have. To become well acquainted with 
the boidevards there is but one way, and that is to come and see 
them. Come, then, and if you need another authority than mine 
to be tempted, remember Heinrich Heine's profound reflection : 

" Lorsque Dieu s'ennuie dans le del," he said, " il met la tSte a hi 
fenetre et regarde ce qui se 2xisse sur le boulevard." 

This judgment requires no commentary ; it is all the more flat- 
tering to otu' vanity, that it was formulated by a stranger, by a 
Parisian who was not of Paris. 



THE CORSO OF ROME 

By W. W. Story 

THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ETTORE TITO 



n 





-t Jii»ir &- 



fcau 



THE FLOWER-SELLERS. 



THE CORSO OF ROME 



OF all the historic streets the great cities of the world pos- 
sess, none can surpass, if indeed any can vie with, the 
so-called Corso of Borne. Shorn as it is now of its ancient 
and mediaeval glories, it is haunted by trains of memories which 
consecrate it to every student. In our own times, even in Rome, 
upstart rivals, of modern growth — and one in particular, the Via 
Nazionale — assume to compare with it. It exceeds it in length and 
in breadth ; it has many modern arts and graces aud conveniences 
that the narrow and dear old Corso lacks. Larger and newer build- 
ings are ranged along its sides. Broader paths for foot-passengers 
have there been constructed. Gayer shops, with larger windows, 
Haunt their goods and invite the world of purchasers. Tramways 
have there been laid down, and the sound of the trumpet from the 
tramway omnibuses warns the carriages and foot-passengers to clear 
the road. All is new, modern, and the birth of to-da3'. But there 
are no memories there, no gleams and visions of old days and cus- 
toms and persons such as cling about the narrow length of the old 
and world-famous street. There are no haunting spirits, no historic 
reminiscences, no legends of the old, no figures of the past. There 
is all the difference between these two streets that there is between 
the gay young girl just entering into life, full of thoughtless gayety 
and looking forward into the future, and the staid old matron, in her 



*f> 



112 The Cor so of Rome 

serene age, who lives more in the past than in the present, and -who 
has delightful stories of the times gone by, and the glories and 
splendors of her youth. Could the Corso be incarnated, with what 
delight should we hang upon her lips and listen to her old-world 
tales, and live over with her the long-vanished past ! 

Even within our own days, and the memories of many now liv- 
ing, a great change has come over the Corso. Not so much prac- 
tically, though many changes and improvements have been made, as 
in respect to the customs and usages of a half-century ago, many 
of which have now vanished. The thump of the tamborello and the 
jingle of its little cymbals that used once to beat and ring every- 
where, while gay girls in costume circled about the little piazze and 
in all the nooks and corners of the city, dancing the saltarello, are 
seen and heard no more. The very costumes they wore are gone. 
The pretty and characteristic songs and ballads, and " rispetti " and 
serenades which once echoed through the streets by day, as well as 
by night, are over. So are all the little ritornelli. We hear no 
more such little songs as this, 

" Fior di ginestra. 
La vostra mamma non vi niarita apposta 
Per non levar quel nor dalla flnestra." 

Ah no ! This belongs to the " days that are no more." We have 
grown wise and dull of late, the glad abandonment to whim and un- 
reasoning jollity has given way to sad, serious cares, and the world 
is less happy and more anxious, and duller. 

The Corso, prosaically considered, is a very narrow street of 
about a mile in length, extending from the Porta del Popolo to the 
Palazzo de Venezia. Except for its palaces, monuments, various 
churches, the post-office, and a few other large buildings which have 
lately been erected, it is for the most part a low line of unimpor- 
tant and irregular houses, crowded with balconies jutting upon 
the street, but of no special note, beauty, or interest, saving for the 




THE BUSIEST PAKX OF THE COItSO. 



114 



The Corso of Rome 



memories attached to some of them, as having been occupied by 
men and women of distinction in ancient and modern tunes. The 
lower stories of these houses are all devoted to shops-which of late 







ENTEANCE OF THE PALAZZO SCIAKRA. 



days have been greatly enlarged and embellished— with plate-glass 
windows through which may be seen a vast variety of objects of all 
kinds. Gas and electric lights flare through them, and at night 
the whole street is brilliantly illuminated and thronged by crowds. 



The Cor so of Rome 115 

The old candles aud oil-lamps, that once through dusky panes shed 
but a feeble and inefficient light, are of the past, and the street has 
become very much like any other in a great city, except that it 
is narrow and haunted by memories. Fortunately, the intolerable 
tramway — intolerable at least to all who are not using it — has not 
been laid down, for the street is not wide enough to permit it ; but 
sidewalks for foot-passengers, of which there were none in the old 
days, have been made, and inany another modern improvement has 
been introduced. 

But few of the great palaces of Rome, and still fewer remains of 
antiquity, are found along the Corso. Among the jialaces which 
al >ut upon it, however, are the Palazzo Kuspoli, in which is a great 
cafe and a Roman club," frecpiented by the Italian nobility, where 
much money is lost, won, and many a game of billiards is played; 
the Palazzo Sciarra, where many interesting pictures are to be seen 
by distinguished masters, among which may be mentioned, in pass- 
ing, the " Vanity and Modesty " of Leonardo da Vinci ; a splendid 
portrait by Titian ; Raffaelle's "Violin-Player," and landscapes by 
Claude : the Palazzo Bonaparte, formerly the property of Madame 
Mere, the mother of Napoleon ; the Palazzo Torlonia, where, in a 
cabinet by itself, stands Canova's famous group of Hercules throw- 
ing Lycas into the sea ; the Palazzo Doria Pamphili, interesting 
to all English visitors ; and the huge, battlemented and castellated 
Palazzo di Venezia, where the Austrian ambassador resides. 

The Palazzo Ruspoli was built on the site of the old Ruccellai 
Gardens, and has passed through various hands. After the E/uc- 
cellai family it became the property of the Gaetani, and was, while 
in their possession, the scene of a tragedy in which a member of 
this house was killed at the main entrance by one of the Orsini, 
since which event that door has been closed. It was lost at the 
gaming-table by the then owner, and won by the banker Puispoli, 
in whose family it still remains. 

Other palaces also adorn the Corso, as for instance the Palazzo 



116 The Corso of Rome 

Chigi, built by Giacoino della Porta, and completed by Carlo Ma- 
derno ; the Palazzo Bernini, with its strange statue of " Calumny " 
by Bernini, and its still more strange inscription by that artist, in- 
veighing against the world, and speaking of his sufferings from its 
slanders ; the Palazzo Piombino, the Palazzo Ferraioli, the Palazzi 
Salviati, Fiano, Verospi, and Theodoli, which are of little conse- 
quence or interest to strangers, but which form a feature of the 
street. 

In the good old times — and by the good old times we all of us 
mean the days that are passed and are no more ; the days of our 
youth, which we remember with a sad pleasure, and the joys of 
which we exaggerate perhaps, while the pains we forget — the Car- 
nival in the Corso, which, alas ! is now almost a thing of the past, 
was a spectacle and an experience full of delight. On that week of 
saturnalia the old sights and sounds, the old hubbiib and gayety 
and license was renewed, every folly was indulged in, and a care- 
less gladness animated the world. Every window and balcony was 
draped with carpets, tapestries, and flowers ; gay faces looked out 
everywhere, and glad laughter filled the air. There were masks and 
harlequins and punchinelli and masquerading and strange costumes 
and singing and mock gallantry and cries of joy on all sides. It 
was the duty of everyone to be gay. The god Momus reigned. All 
the world flocked in from the country, and the old dresses and cos- 
tumes which in eveiy town in the vicinity of Pome were tin 11 
worn daily, were to be seen. Now those costumes have for the most 
part utterly disappeared, and are only to be seen now and then, or 
on the persons of the models who pose for the artists. They were 
very gay, very various, and it was a pleasure to see them. Now 
they have given way to the commonplace and shabby dresses of to- 
day. But in the old Carnival they were eA'erywhere to be seen. 
Improvised balconies and stagings were erected all along the Corso, 
and these were filled with country girls in their costumes. XT}) and 
down the street, in double files, slowly, and at snail's pace, throngs 



The Corso of Rome 



117 



of open carriages 
followed each 
other, filled with 
flowers which the 
occupants scat- 
tered right and 
left, laughing the 
while they pur- 
sued their slow 
way through the 
dense crowds that 
filled the streets. 
Flowers and con- 
fetti s h o w ere d 
upon them as 
they passed, and 
there was a gen- 
eral hub hull of 
jollity and confu- 
sion and mad- 
ness, as if old 
Rome's descend- 
ants w e r e still 
alive and shout- 
ing in triumph. 
In the midst of 
all this riot and 
gayety, as the 
shadows of night- 
fall drew near, a 
trumpet sounded. 
T h e m o u n t e d 
gendarmes, who 




V J,'lo m 



>)i P>ni. 



■ 



THE LITTLE FLOWEKGIUL. 



118 The Corso of Rome 

all day had been stationed at the corners of the streets to preserve 
a certain decency of order in all this disorder, advanced, and all the 
carriages were turned out of the Corso. 

Then daily came the races, from which the Corso takes its name. 
The prize for the winner of these was formerly a rich piece of vel- 
vet, a mantle, a "Pallio," or Pallium. From this fact these races 
were commonly called the Pallio Paces. As soon as the street was 
cleared of carriages these took place. Covered with spangles, and 
with dangling spurs that beat against their sides and drove them 
madly forward, came rushing on, unmounted, at full gallop, and 
cheered loudly as they passed by the crowd that lined, the sides of 
the street, the wild horses called the Barberi. They ran from the 
Piazza del Popolo to the end of the Corso, where the street is nar- 
rowed by a wing of the Venetian Palace. There, at a street called 
the Pipresa dei Barberi, they were generally stopped by a large 
sheet spread across it, so that they might not dash themselves 
against the wall, but find only a yielding obstacle to bar their fur- 
ther progress, and thus they were caught and restrained. 

The week of Carnival was ended by the so-called Moccoletti, 
when, as night came on, thousands of little wax tapers were lighted 
and danced about everywhere, like fire-flies, and everybody was 
shouting and striving to put out his neighbor's light. Moccolo, 
moccolo, moccolo, all cried, as they held up their tapers, and strove 
to keep them out of the reach of extinction ; and equally every- 
where was heard the cry of Senza moccolo, senza moccolo, and 
shrieks of laughter as any lights were extinguished. It was all very 
foolish, if you please, but it was immensely diverting. The wise 
man knows the charm of jollity, and of all things nothing is so fool- ' 
ish as not to recognize the necessity of sometimes being foolish. A 
laugh is the best clearer of the brain and the best aid to digestion. 
Man was made to laugh, so evviva absurdity and gayety ! and evviva 
carnevale, which swept away, at least for a time, the sad worries of 
daily life and the exasperating cares of what is called business. 



The Corso of Rome 



119 



Ail attempt is now talked of to renew the old customs of the carni- 
val, and large preparations are to be made to re-establish it in all 
its characteristic features. The races of 
the Barberi are not to be allowed, on ac- 
count of the supposed danger attending 
them. They were prohibited, indeed, sev- 
eral years ago on account of a serious ac- 
cident involving the life of several persons, 
the horses in their fright having deviated 
from the street and rushed 
into the crowd. In their 
stead, races are pro- 
posed to be made in 
cars, aud the popu- 
lace are to be defend- 
ed by a railing along 
the street. Whether, 
in the revival of this 
festival, it will be 
carried on with the 
old spirit, remains 
to be seen; Sj>< ri- 
amo ! 



At the Palazzo di 
Venezia the Corso, 
property so called, ends, but 
formerly it probably was con- 
tinued to the Capitol, and it 
fitly should thus be continued 




TRAMONTANA— THE COLD WIND OF ROME. 



The name of Corso is of compara- 
tively late date, and was given to it on account of the races of un- 
mounted horses which take place during the Carnival. Formerly it 
was called the Via Flaminia, or the Yia Lata, and was a continuation 



120 The Cor so of Rome 

of the great Flaminian way, built in 534-533 B.C. by the Consul 
Flaininius, who fell in the battle of Thrasymene, and extending far 
beyond the gates of Home. Augustus, subsequently, had the grand 
idea — for the Romans at that time had grand ideas — of continuing 
it as far as Fano and beyond, on both sides of Rome, so as to make 
it practicable frorn one sea to the other, across the whole continent ; 
thus marrying the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. In this he 
simply followed the scheme of the great Cpesar, who, to use his 
own words cited by Suetonius, designed " Viam munire a mare 
supero per apennini dorsum ad Tiberim usque." It was not until 
the comparatively late day of Pope Paul II., who built the apos- 
tolic palace of St. Mark at the beginning of this street, that the 
Pallio Piaces, so called in the Corso, were instituted, and then it Mas 
that the name of Corso was first given to this street, in view of this 
fact. Up to this time it had, as has been said before, the name of 
Via Lata, and this name is still preserved in the Church of Sta. 
Maria in Via Lata. The name of Via Lata, which translated is 
simply the Broadway (for, singularly enough, in this appellation it 
but anticipated the great street of New York), was in all probability 
given to it on account of its magnificent breadth and dimensions ; 
and over it went in ancient days the grand processions and 
triumphs of Eome, witli all their splendor and pomp — entering the 
Plaminian gate, which, if it did not occupy the same exact position 
as the present Porta del Popolo, was very near to it. and proceeding 
through the full length of it to the Capitol. 

A great change has come over the Corso since those old days. 
Ruin and desolation have for centuries effaced the great features of 
the city and of the Via Lata ; and now the old name of Via Lata, or 
Broadway, would be most inappropriate to the narrow street which 
is its successor. But looking back with historic eyes into the past, 
one can easily summon up the splendid processions of triumph 
that once entered the city at this gate and passed along this great 
wav — the Via Lata. 



The Cor so of Rome 



121 



The victor t< i whom the honor of a triumph was accorded was 
obliged to stand at the gate until a deputation was sent to him to 
grant him permission to enter. There at the rising of the sun, 
clad in his purple em- 
broidered robes, and 
crowned with laurel, he 
waited, and when the 
permission was granted, 
mounted on a magnifi- 
cent car drawn by four 
white horses, and some- 
times even by elephants, 
he made his triumphal 
progress, preceded by 
the senate, and accom- 
panied by an immense 
crowd of citizens all 
dressed in white robes. 
The air was rent by the 
1 >1< wing of trumpets and 
horns and flutes and ev- 
ery kind of instrument 
then known. Flags and 
standards flouted the ail'. 
Cars laden with the 
spoils of war rattled 
along the pavement, and 
behind them, with 
shaven heads and fet- 
ters on their hands and feet, came the chiefs of the enemies whom 
the victor had concpiered. These were followed by the oxen and 
other beasts which were to be immolated in honor of the occa- 
sion ; their gilded horns crowned with flowers, and conducted by 




^•^fW-T 



V FUv 



GUARDSMAN. 



122 The Cor so of Rome 

their executioners, who were naked to the , waist and bore on their 
shoulders the expiatory axes. The car on which the victor stood 
was of ivory, with rich chisellings and reliefs of gold, and behind it 
walked the slave or other person who, from time to time, uttered 
these warning words : " Remember that you are a man " — " Re- 
spiciens post te hominem memento te." Then came the phalanxes 
of soldiers in military dress, crowned with laurel and singing, and 
shouting " Io triumphe," and indulging in the broadest satires and 
jests ; for all things were permitted to them on this occasion, as 
afterward in our days in the crowds at Carnival. 

At the Capitol, when the victor arrived, two white bulls were sac- 
rificed to Jove, and the victor took from his head his laurel wreath 
and placed it on the statue of the god. 

The Carnival of later days in some respects, is a singular trav- 
esty of this. There is the same license accorded to the crowd, and 
until within late days the Carnival was also opened by a sacrifice. • 
In the Piazza del Popolo, on the first day, if there were any person 
under sentence of death in Rome, he was then executed and decap- 
itated, as a warning to all who were about to indulge in the festiv- 
ities of the coming week to restrain their jmssions, and remember 
that the axe of justice and retribution was waiting to punish crime. 

The Romans, tinder the popes, were not behind their imperial 
ancestors in their love of pomp and processions and festivals ; and 
the solemn and splendid processions which were made in the med- 
iaeval times were nearly, if not quite, as splendid as the ancient 
triumphs. The Corso of those clays was the scene of many of 
these triumphal celebrations, upon the entrance through the gate of 
some returning pope or some distinguished king or prince. When, 
for instance, Cardinal Chiaramonti was elected to the papal chair 
(to mention one of these instances), his reception at his entrance in- 
to the city was as magnificent almost as an ancient triumph. Rome 
had then suffered under many political afflictions, and the election 



The Cor so of Rome 123 

of Pius VII. was hailed by the whole people with exultation and 
unrepressed joy, and it was through the gate of the Piazza del Po- 
polo and along the Corso that this pageant awaited him, on July 3, 
1799. The scene that then took place, and the arrangements and 
decorations of the streets, are fully described by Cancellieri in his 
history, and were celebrated by the striking of a medal in honor of 
the event, with the efhgy of the pope on one side and a triumphal 
arch on the other. The nobility, senate, and people were unani- 
mous in their rejoicing, and by their order was erected, at the 
opening of the Corso from the Piazza del Popolo, a great trium- 
phal arch spanning the street and joining together the two churches 
of the Madonna dei Miracoli and Sta. Maria di Monte Santo, which 
flank on either side the entrance of the Corso. Upon this were 
placed colossal statues, and it was decorated with inscriptions and 
emblems and elaborate ornaments. In the Piazza itself were erected 
two long lines of stagings and seats for the accommodation of the 
people, and also for four orchestras, and ranged along it were long 
lines of Neapolitan soldiers. The streets were all hung with rich 
draperies and tapestries, and nothing was spared to make the recep- 
tion of the pope as splendid as possible. General Bourchard, with 
a cortege of officers and five hundred men, went out as far as the 
Ponte Molle to meet the incoming pope. There he assumed his 
grand papal robes and mounted into a magnificent gilt coach drawn 
by sis horses. Such was the enthusiasm of the people that they 
begged to be allowed to draw the carriage themselves, but this the 
pope declined — and escorted by crowds of rejoicing Romans, and 
long lines of cavalry and foot-soldiers, the pope entered the city. 
All the bells of all the churches clanged their welcome for an hour 
and a half. From the Castle of St. Angelo, where the pontifical 
standards were displayed, the peals of cannon were constant, and 
the bands never ceased playing ; and thus Pius VII. first entered 
Rome as Pope. 

Again, on his return from Paris, where he went to crown Napo- 



124 The Corso of Rome 

leon in 1805, his reception was equally splendid, and accompanied 
by all the cardinals, prelates, and priests in full dress, and by all 
the carriages of the nobility, and large bodies of infantiy and cav- 
alry, and the mounted Noble Guard, and crowds of the shouting 
and cheering populace, he again made his entrance into the city, 
passing over the same streets and going first to St. Peter's, where 
he was received by the Sacred College and all the Roman court and 
senators. There he recited the " Te Deum." Then mounting again 
into his carriage, the Cardinal York opening the door, he was borne 
on to the Quirinal, where he was again received by the palatine car- 
dinals and the Roman princes and nobility. When the shadows of 
night came on there was a general illumination of the city, and the 
cupola of St. Peter's blazed with light, and the gorgeous girandoles 
sprang into the air, and showered like a fountain of stars over the 
Castle of St. Angelo. 

Nor did this suffice. For a third time, on May 29, 1814, a still 
more magnificent and imposing reception awaited him on his re- 
turn to Pome after five years of exile. Again he entered the city 
through the Porta del Popolo and passed through the Corso. 
Arches of triumph were erected along the streets that he passed. 
All the houses were richly adorned with hangings and tapestries, 
and flowers and ornaments of every kind, and the streets themselves 
were strewn with laurel and myrtle. Every window was crowded by 
eager spectators, who threw flowers upon him as he passed. Arches 
were also erected all the way outside the city from Papa Giulio, so 
called, to the gate, decorated with statues of Pome and Religion, 
and adorned with the pontifical arms and flowers and wreaths and 
inscriptions of welcome and honor. A colonnade was also built 
leading from the Porta del Popolo to the Corso. In the Piazza de 
Venezia a most elaborate and costly arch of the Doric order was 
erected hj the mercanti di Campagna, with groups of statues and 
emblems and inscriptions ; and among those who lent their services 
to this was Thorwaldsen. And thus again, for the third time, the 



The Corso of Rome 



125 



pope, accompanied by crowds of the people, the nobility, the papal 
court, the bands playing, the bells ringing, the cannon pealing from 
St. Angelo, and the crowd cheering, made his 
triumphal entrance into Home. 

It is useless to recount more of these 
great processions 



and triumphs of the 
Corso, though they 
might be continued 
almost indefinitely. 
Even within our 
own days, when- 
ever Pope Pius IX. 
passed, it was a lit- 
tle triumph. Seated 
in a gilt carriage 



drawn by four 
horses, with out- 
riders in 1 >rilliant 
livery, and accom- 
panied by the Noble 
Guard on horse- 
back, in full dress, 
the beneficent face 
and figure of the 
kindly old man ,rj ,l« y 
might often be seen' 
in the Corso, smil- 
ing upon the crowd 
through which he 
passed, and holding out his hand with three fingers spread (on one 
of which was the great papal ring), in benediction of the people, 
who, as he went by, prostrated themselves before him. This is 




'lun. 



A BOOK-STALL ON THE CORSO. 



126 



The Corso of Rome 



now, alas ! a thing of the past. For many a year no papal carriage 
has passed through the Corso, or elsewhere in the city, and not even 
a gilded coach of any cardinal, such as used, in the times gone by, 
so often to be seen. The farce of prisoner in the Vatican is still 
going on, and yet — and yet, if the Pope were now to reappear in 




STATE CARRIAGE OF THE QUEEN OF ITALY. 



the Corso and along the streets of Rome as he was once wont, and 
as lie is free as air to do, if he so wills, the people would again 
prostrate themselves before him and ask his benediction ; for 
though times have changed, politics have changed, and royalty 
reigns, and the people are loyal to their king, and satisfied with his 
rule, they are still Catholics, and the papal power reigns, at least, 
in their religion ; and even the king and queen and the whole 



The Corso of Rome 127 

court would, as he passed, bow down before him as the representa- 
tive of a power above this world. 

Now, instead of Pope and Cardinals, one often sees the King, 
in a simple equipage, driving or driven, and accompanied by 
some gentleman of the Court, bowing constantly and lifting his 
hat in response to the salutations of the world of Rome — or the 
Queen, with her outriders, smibng graciously, and looking, as she 
is, sweet, gentle, kind, and extremely intelligent ; and it may be 
added that she is, as she deserves to be, adored by her people. 

Other spectacles I have seen in this old street of the Corso, the 
reverse of triumph, within our own days ; it was the custom, when 
a thief was taken and convicted, to lead him publicly through this 
street with an iron-spiked gorget on his neck to prevent him from 
bending down his head and hiding his face, so that the whole world 
might see him and know him. Two men with a drum and fife, 
which they constantly beat and played upon to attract attention, 
accompanied him. This custom has now gone out of use ; but I am 
doubtful whether it was not as efficient, and perhaps even more so, 
in deterring persons from the crime of theft than a simple impris- 
onment for a few weeks ; for, after all, the sense of shame is in 
the human heart as strong in its effect, if not stronger, than pun- 
ishment or imprisonment. 

Still other scenes here occasionally meet the eyes. It may be, 
perhaps, a baptism, or a wedding, or a funeral procession. If it is a 
baptism, in the first carriage, triumphant, dressed in costume, with 
her long ear-rings in her ears, her gold chain on her neck, her fili- 
gree pin in her hair, sits the nurse, the commander of the occasion, 
with the infant in her arms swaddled in white. You may know if 
it be a girl or a boy by the color of the ribbon that is attached to its 
dress, which the nurse takes proud care shall be full in sight. If it 
is a boy, the ribbon is red — if a girl, it is blue, for that is the color 
which belongs specially to the Madonna. You are not left in the 
condition of the man who has to guess the sex. " You have had a 



128 The Corso of Rome 

child born to you this morning — what is it, a girl or a boy ? " once 
said an Irishman, rather a foolish one, be it confessed, to his friend. 
"Guess," was the answer. "It is a boy." "No, guess again." 
"It is a girl." "Ah! somebody tauld you," was the reply. This 
ribbon saves you the guessing and proclaims the truth to the world. 
At the side of the nurse, somewhat obliterated, and playing, as a 
rule, a most secondary part, sits the " commare," or godmother, and 
two of the nearest female relatives of the infant. After this carriage 
comes another, in which sit the male relations, who are, of course, 
relegated to the second plane, as of far less consequence on this 
grand occasion. The crowd in the street stops at the church door 
as this party descend and enter the sacred precincts, when the holy 
water is sprinkled on the child ; and if startled by this operation 
it cries out, it is a good sign, for it shows that the innate devil 
which is always born in us has been driven away by the sacramen- 
tal blessing. 

Sometimes, again, it is a marriage, more or less ceremonious ac- 
cording to the rank of the parties — the bride dressed in white, and 
the bridegroom more sadly in black, as if he were giving himself 
away. A long train of carriages follows, with all the friends and 
relations. 

Sometimes, again, it is a funeral, and the pomp and ceremony 
of this depends also on the rank of those who are to be buried. 
Among the middle and poorer classes — indeed, generally, unless 
the rank is high — the coffin is borne on the shoulders of facchini 
hired for the occasion, who are clad in a long, black, shabby sort of 
gown, that comes nearly down to the feet ; but it is not so long as 
not to show the soiled trousers below it. Their heads and faces are 
covered with a black hood of the same material, so that they cannot 
be recognized. The parish priest precedes the procession in his 
official and sacred robes, holding on high a tall crucifix, and af- 
ter the coffin, as well as before it, slowly marches a long line of 
priests, or Capuchins, or members of some religious community, 



I 



The Corso of Rome 



129 



each carrying a lighted torch or candle — for this is an essential part 
of the ceremony, and is not omitted even by the poorest classes. 
As they move along they chant, in a low, monotonous tone, the 
prayers and responses appropriate to the occasion, and with, it must 
be confessed, apparently little or no sense of their meaning. After 




r-frtrii Kc •■■-■■ 



A PROCESSION .if SEMINARISTS. 



bearing the body to the church they leave it there. Then function 
is fulfilled, and when night has cast its shadow over the world, it is 
borne away by the faccliini to its final resting-jDlace, and buried 
without pomp, prayer, or ceremony. 

Sometimes long lines of some confraternity of monks may be 
seen marching along, in monkish dresses and cowls, or one of the 
begging community of Franciscans or Capuchins passes by, carry- 



130 



The Corso of Rome 



ing a basket on his arm and holding in his hand a little tin box, 
with a crucifix on one side and a picture of the Madonna on the 
other. This he shakes in your face as he passes, and the copper 
coins in it jingle as he craves alms, either of money or of kind. If 
you prefer to give money, you drop a little copper into the slit in 



£_)>"<)\~ 




MOKKISG ON THE CORSO. 



the tin box. But he not only begs of the passers on the street, 
but enters many a shop and shakes the tin box there, where he 
often receives alms of kind — as fruit, or vegetables, or anything else 
—which is placed in his basket and thankfully accepted, whatever 
it is. 

Occasionally, too, may be seen a figure in a white monastic dress 
and cowl, covering his entire person — head and face — so as to render 



The Corso of Route 131 

him utterly unrecognizable, and with two small holes in front of 
his cowl through which you may, if near him, see two sharp black 
eyes peering forth. He also carries a similar tin box which he 
shakes as he passes for alms. Who he is you cannot divine, but 
you cannot be sure that he is not some Roman friend or nobleman, 
whom you last met at some gay rerinion, or ball, or party, and who 
is now doing penance by carrying about publicly the beggar's tin 
box ; for there are penitents, so called, who may belong to the 
highest of the nobility in Rome. 

Then, again, you will, especially in the month of May, which is 
dedicated to the Madonna, meet long trains of little girls dressed in 
white, with garlands, and accompanied by some nun or conventual 
sister, who are celebrating some festival in the Madonna's honor ; 
or, again, long lines of little school-boys, in black dress-coats and 
tall hats, under the guidance of their priestlj- tutor, and taking their 
walk solemnly and with little fun, except what they find in their 
childish chatter. 

But let us, too, make our entrance, not triumphantly, indeed, but 
with the curiosity of strangers, through the gate of the Piazza del 
Popolo, and open our eyes to what is to be there seen. This is one 
of the principal gates of Eome, and is one of the most imposing. 
Until the railway was built, which now lands all travellers at the 
Piazza dei Termini, near the vast remains and ruins of the Baths of 
Diocletian, this was the chief entrance into the city for all who came 
from the north of Italy. Here passports were examined, for none 
could enter Rome without them, and here the luggage was over- 
hauled, to make it sure that no contraband goods were concealed. 
The annoyance of all this was very great, and this, thank God and 
the new government, is now over, and one of the things of the past 
not to be regretted. 

The gate itself is said to have been designed by Michel Angelo ; 
but inasmuch as Michel Angelo is, by popular belief, supposed to 
have designed nearly everything, little credence can be given to this 



The Corso of Rome 133 

statement. But whether it was originally designed by him or not, 
nothing of his work now remains, for it was rebuilt by Barozzi da 
Vignola, in 1564, and since then, has suffered many a change, all the 
interior facade having been made by Bernini. 

This gate has also revolutionary memories, for it was fc utified, 
barricaded, armed with cannon, and was attacked and defended 
during the French invasion of 1849, and it was through it that Gen- 
eral Oudiuot entered with the French troojDS — an entrance which, 
so far, at least, as the republican party and the Triumvirate of 
Rome were concerned, certainly did not correspond to the in- 
scription which accompanied the various ornaments and devices 
placed over it by Alexander YIL, in 1655, on the occasion of the 
grand entry of Queen Christina of Sweden — " Felici faustocpie 
ornata ingressui." 

Entering this gate you rind yourself in the large and noble Piazza 
del Popolo, in the centre of which, surrounded by living fountains, 
stands the old obelisk of Egypt, that has looked down upon so many 
generations, and which was erected by Rhamses I., in front of the 
Temple of the Sun at Heliopolis, ami which may have thrown its 
shadow over Moses himself. The piazza itself is like the nave of 
a wheel, from which radiate, like spokes, the three streets of the 
Babbuiuo, the Ripetta, and the Corso, which is the central one, and 
which is tlanked on either side by the twin churches of Sta. Maria 
in Monte Santo, and Sta. Maria dei Miracoli. Above it, on the left, 
rises the Pincio, and looks down upon it from its terraces. These 
charming walks were once the old Domitian Gardens, and here, in 
or close beside the Piazza del Popolo, the restless, cruel, cowardly, 
violent, and luxurious lover and murderer of Poppasa, and son of 
the imperious Agrippina, the half-madman, artist, and musician, 
Nero, cowardly even in his death, was finally laid to rest ; for he 
was one of the Domitian family. The church of Sta. Maria del 
Popolo, close by the gate, is said, according to the traditions of the 
Church, to have been the site of his tomb. Whether this is founded 



134 



The Corso of Rome 



on fact is questionable, but it is certain that, if not exactly there, it 
was in its close vicinity. No fragment of it now remains, however, 
for Pasquale II., urged by the prayers of the Eoman people, effaced 




even the last fragments of 
it, yielding to the then uni- 
versal superstition that the 
tomb was haunted by evil loggers on the steps of the ohcbch oe sta. mama 

J DEL POPOLO. 

spirits and demons, who 

assailed everyone who passed near it. These malignant spirits were 
supposed to dwell in the branches of a great nut-tree which grew 
out of the top of this tomb ; and this, together with the tomb, Pope 
Pasquale II., in 1099, utterly destroyed after a fast and prayers of 



The Cor so of Rome 135 

three clays, leaving not a vestige of it, throwing the ashes of Nero 
into the Tiber, sanctifying the spot, and building thereon the 
church which still stands there. Alexander VI., the Borgian Pope, 
was affected by the same superstition, and, centuries after, he dec- 
orated the church, and, among other things, caused a representation 
in stucco to be made of the tomb of Nero and the nut-tree, and the 
evil spirits that dwelt therein, and there it still may be seen. 

While at this end of the Corso there is this sad tradition, at the 
other end is another tradition, as dear to the Christian world as 
this is detestable. The Church of Sta. Maria in Via Lata, which 
stands by the side of the Doria Palace, is supposed to have been 
built on the site of the house where St. Paxil lodged with the centu- 
rion, and in the subterranean church is a spring of water, miracu- 
lous in its origin, and which is traditionally supposed to have sud- 
denly burst forth to enable St. Paul to baptize his disciples. 

Besides the obelisk of Pihamses I. there is another remnant of 
the ancient world in the Corso, which is still in admirable preser- 
vation. This is the column of Antonine, so called — which was for- 
merly supposed to be that of Antoninus Pius — but now is known 
properly to be that of one of the purest and best of all the royal 
race whose lives history has recorded ; of the emperor and philoso- 
pher Marcus Aurelius, whose "Meditations" are inspired by the 
noblest sentiments of honor, justice, and truth, aud of an abnega- 
tion of self which is supposed to be only Christian. Here, too, 
among the bas-reliefs on its sides which figure the conquests of the 
Marcomannic wars, is one which represents what was supposed to 
be a miracle effected by the prayers of the Christian legion. Jupi- 
ter is here seen, with water falling from his outspread arms, in an- 
swer to the prayers for water which this legion were requested to 
make at a time when the army was greatly distressed for want of it. 
The tradition is founded upon a passage in Eusebius, and a letter 
of Justin Martyr, and though great suspicion attaches to the au- 
thenticity of the last, the Church has accepted it as true, and his- 



136 



The Corso of Rome 



torians have constantly repeated it. Why , the Christians should 
pray to Jupiter — and why Jupiter should answer — is not explained, 

but miracles are rarely explica- 
ble. 

What we are in the habit of 

seeing daily soon ceases to make 

a deep or sharp impression on 

the mind, and to many of the 

Romans, even of the better class, 

who are ignorant of history and 

have no literary training, the very 

names of the relics and remains 

of antiquity, which so deeply 

impress the stranger, are often 

unknown. An odd instance of 

this occurred on the first visit of 

the Queen of Italy to Rome. As 

she passed for the first time 

through the Corso 

and caught a 

glimpse in passing 

of this column of 

Aurelius, she 

eagerly turned to 

the gentleman who 

accompanied her 

(who was one of 

the gentlemen of 

the court) and 

asked, " What is that column ? " " Ah, that," hesitatingly replied 

the person addressed, "that— oh! that is the colonna of Piazza 

Colonna." 

There is also another reminiscence of Marcus near the Via della 




PIAZZA COLONNA, 

ALONG THE CORSO. 



The Cor so of Rome 137 

Vita, and this is au inscription on the wall recording the fact that 
here once stood the triumphal arch of this great emperor, which 
was entirely destroyed by order of Pope Alexander VI. ; and this 
inscription, strangely enough, recording his barbarous act, was 
placed there by the Pope himself, as if it had been a glory, not a 
shame. 

The arch of Claudius was near the Piazza Sciarra, to the right 
of the church of the Oara Vita, which belongs to the Jesuits. 
There is no vestige of it now remaining, nor of the other arches of 
Domitian, Claudius, and Gordian, which once spanned the Corso ; 
but the church of the ( Sara Vita, which stands on or near the spot 
where once stood the arch of Claudius, is perhaps in some respects 
as characteristic of modern times and the Catholic Church, as were 
these triumphal arches of ancient days of the Roman Empire. The 
church is small and of no special interest in itself, but during Lent 
an extraordinary penitence takes place there, which, however it 
may conflict with our notions of a kind and beneficent God of 
mercy and love, is at least singular and interesting. Here, when 
the shadows of night come on and darken entirely the whole 
church, so that nothing definite can be seen, an exhortation from 
the priest is heard coming out of the silence, imploring those who 
have been guilty of sins of commission and omission to repent 
and expiate them by self-flagellation. A bell is then rung, and 
these words iu Italian are heard in the darkness : " Show your pen- 
ance ; show your sense of Christ's sacrifice ; show it with the whip." 
After which, for some fifteen minutes, the penitents, stripped naked 
to the waist, scourge themselves with strings of knotted whipcord, 
crying out, " Blessed Virgin Mary, pray for us." The severer the 
scourging the greater the expiation, and the bleeding backs of the 
penitents attest their faith in this strange and melancholy mode of 
pacifying an angry God, or at least a God who is pleased by the 
sufferings self-inflicted of his creatures. 

Among the other churches in the Corso may be mentioned that 



138 The Corso of Rome 

of the St. Giacomo degli Incurabili, of the Augustine church of 

Gesu e Maria, and St. Lorenzo in Luciria. This church is interest- 

in°- as being the burial-place of Nicholas Poussin, and as coutainiug 

a remarkable picture by Guido representing the Crucifixion, which is 

thus spoken of by Mr. Browning, in " The Ring and the Book," as 

the piece 

" Of Master Guido Reni, Christ on cross, 
Second to naught observable in Rome." 

And again : 

" This San Lorenzo seems 
My own particular place. I always say 
I used to wonder, when I stood scarce high 
As the bed here, what the marble lion meant, 
Eating the figure of a prostrate man." 

But here there is neither time nor space to linger much longer 
among those churches. Still there is one more, that of Sta. Maria 
del Popolo in the Piazza, into which a glance at least must be given 
at some of the interesting things it contains. Here, then, are noble 
pictures by Pinturicchio, and a chapel built by Giovanni delle 
Bovere, and decorated by the same artist, and an Assumption by 
Carlo Maratta, and a chapel designed by Baffaelle, in which he 
manifests himself in the triple character of architect, painter, 
and sculptor— for the design of the mosaic on the ceiling, as well as 
the architecture, is by him— and also a marble group below of 
Jonah sitting on a whale. Here, too, is a work by Sebastian del 
Piombo, who is buried in this church. And there are other things 
of interest which we must now pass by. 

Close by this church is the Augustine Convent belonging to it, 
in which Luther made his home while he was in the Eternal City. 
Here he celebrated mass. Here he prostrated himself, and cried 
out, " Hail, sacred Rome, thrice sacred for the blood of the martyrs 
shed here." But before he left Borne his opinion changed, his 



The Corso of Rome 139 

Catholic faith was sapped, and from being a devoted ally he be- 
came, as all the world knows, the most determined opponent of the 
Church. 

Here we must take leave of the Corso, with its obelisks and 
fountains and palaces and shops ; its remains of antiquity and its 
modern sights ; its ancient triumphs and its modern processions ; of 
its living populace and its equally living ghosts that haunt it, and 
whisper to the memory and imagination. At all these visions of 
the dead and of the living we can but cast here a hurried glance, for 
fully to record them would far exceed the limits of a paper like this. 




A BOY FLOWER -SELLER. 



THE GRAND CANAL 
By Henry James 

THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEXANDER ZEZZOS 




-■?y 



r m 



THE GRAND CANAL FROM A TERRACE. 



THE GRAND CANAL 



THE lioiior of representing the plan and the place at their best 
might perhaps appear, in the City of St. Mark, properly to 
belong to the splendid square which 1 tears the patron's name, 
aud which is the centre of Venetian life so far (this is pretty well all 
the way indeed i. as Venetian life is a matter of strolling and chatter- 
ing, of gossiping and gaping, of circulating without a purpose, and 
of staling — too often with a foolish one — through the shop-windows 
of dealers whose hospitality' makes their doorsteps dramatic, at the 
very vulgarest rubbish in all the modern market. If the Grand 
Canal, however, is not quite technically a "street," the perverted 
Piazza is perhaps even less of one ; and I hasten to add that I am 
glad not to find myself studying my subject under the international 
arcades, or even (I will go the length of saying) in the solemn pres- 
ence of the church. For indeed, in that case, I foresee I shoidd be- 
come even more confoundingly conscious of the stumbling-block that 
inevitably, even with his first few words, crops up in the path of the 
lover of Venice who rashly addresses himself to expression. " Ve- 
netian life " is a mere literary convention, even though it be an in- 
dispensable figure. The words have played an effective part in 
the literature of sensibility ; they constituted, thirty years ago, the 
title of Mr. Howell's delightful volume of impressions ; but in using 
them to-day one owes some frank amends to one's own lucidity. 



144 The Grand Canal 

Let me carefully premise, therefore, that so often as they shal 
again drop from my pen, so often shall I beg to be regarded as 
systematically superficial. 

Venetian life, in the large old sense, has long since come to an 
end, and the essential present character of the most melancholy of 
cities resides simply in its being the most beautiful of tombs. No- 
where else has the past been laid to rest with such tenderness, such 
a sadness of resignation and remembrance. Nowhere else is the 
present so alien, so discontinuous, so like a crowd in a cemetery 
without garlands for the graves. It has no flowers in its hands, but 
as a compensation, perhaps — and the thing is doubtless more to the 
point — it has money and little red books. The everlasting shuffle, 
in the Piazza, of these irresponsible visitors is contemporary Vene- 
tian life. Everything else is only a reverberation of that. The 
vast mausoleum has a turnstile at the door, and a functionary in 
a shabby uniform lets you in, as per tariff, to see how dead it is. 
From this constellation, this cold curiosity, proceed all the industry, 
the prosperity, the vitality of the place. The shopkeepers and gon- 
doliers, the beggars and the models, depend upon it for a living ; 
they are the custodians and the ushers of the great museum — they 
are even themselves to a certain extent the objects on exhibition. 
It is in the wide vestibule of the square that the polyglot pilgrims 
gather most densely ; Piazza San Marco is like the lobby of the 
opera in the intervals of the performance. The present fortune of 
Venice, the lamentable difference, is most easily measured there, 
and that is why, in the effort to resist our pessimism, we must turn 
away both from the purchasers and from the venders of ri<-<>rJi. 
The ricordi that we prefer are gathered best where the gondola 
glides — best of all on the noble waterway that begins in its glory at 
the Salute and ends in its abasement at the railway station. It is, 
however, the cockneyfied Piazzetta (forgive me, shade of St. 
Theodore — has not a brand new cafe begun to glare there, electri- 
cally, this very year '? ) that introduces us most directly to the great 



Tbe Grand Canal 



145 



picture by which the Grand Canal works its first spell, and to which 
a thousand artists, not always with a talent apiece, have paid their 
tribute. We pass into the Piazzetta to look down the great throat, 
as it were, of Venice, and the vision must console us for turning our 
backs on St. Mark's. 

We have been treated to it again and again, of course, even if we 




have never stirred from home ; but that is only a reason the more 
for catching at any freshness that may be left in the world of pho- 
tography. It is in Venice, above all, that we hear the small buzz of 
this vulgarizing voice of the familiar ; yet perhaps it is in Venice, 
too, that the picturesque fact has best mastered the pious secret of 
how to wait for us. Even the classic Salute waits, like some great 
lady on the threshold of her saloon. She is more ample and serene, 
more seated at her door, than all the copyists have told its, with her 



146 



The Grand Canal 



domes and scrolls, her scolloped buttresses and statues forming a 
pompous crown, and her wide steps disposed on the ground like 
the train of a robe. This fine air of the woman of the world is car- 
ried out by the well - bred assurance with which she looks in the 



. • 



I 




A GIRL OF THE PEOPLE. 



direction of her old-fashioned Byzantine neighbor ; and the juxta- 
position of two churches so distinguished and so different, each 
splendid in its sort, is a sufficient mark of the scale and range of 
Venice. However, we ourselves are looking away from St. Mark's 
— we must blind our eyes to that dazzle ; without it, indeed, there 
are brightnesses and fascinations enough. We see them in abun- 
dance, even while we look away from the shady steps of the Salute. 



The Grand Canal 147 

These steps are cool in the morning, yet I don't know that I can jus- 
tify my excessive fondness for them any better than I can explain a 
hundred of the other vague infatuations with which Venice sophis- 
ticates the spirit. Under such an influence, fortunately, one needn't 
explain — it keeps account of nothing but perceptions and affections. 
It is from the Salute steps, perhaps, of a summer morning, that 
this view of the open mouth of the city is most brilliantly amusing 
The whole thing composes as if composition were the chief end of 
human institutions. The charming architectural promontory of the 
Dogana stretches out the most graceful of arms, balancing in its 
hand the gilded globe on which revolves the delightful satirical fig- 
ure of a little weathercock of a woman. This Fortune, or Naviga- 
tion, or whatever she is called— she surely needs no name — catches 
the wind in the bit of drapery of which she has divested her rotary 
bronze loveliness. On the other side of the Canal twinkles and glit- 
ters the long row of the happy palaces which are mainly expensive 
hotels. There is a little of everything everywhere, in the bright 
Venetian air, but to these houses belongs especially the appearance 
of sitting, across the water, at the receipt of custom, of watching, in 
their hypocritical loveliness, for the stranger and the victim. I call 
them happy because even their sordid uses and their vulgar signs 
melt somehow, with their vague sea-stained pinks and drabs, into 
that strange gayety of light and color which is made up of the re- 
flection of superannuated things. The atmosphere plays over them 
like a laugh, they are of the essence of the sad old joke. They are 
almost as charming from other places as they are from their own 
balconies, and share fully in that universal privilege of Venetian ob- 
jects which consists of being both the picture and the point of view. 
This double character, which is particularly strong in the Grand 
Canal, adds a difficulty to any control of one's notes. The Grand 
Canal may be practically, as an impression, the cushioned balcony 
of a high and well-loved palace — the memory of irresistible even- 
ings, of the sociable elbow, of endless lingering and looking ; or it 



/ 



148 



The Grand Canal 



may evoke the restlessness of a fresh curiosity, of methodical in- 
quiry, in a gondola piled with references. There are no references, 
I ought to mention, in the present remarks, which sacrifice to acci- 
dent, not to completeness. A rhapsody on Venice is always in 

order, but I think 
jf ij the catalogues are 

finished. I should 
not attempt to 
write here the 
names of all the 
palaces, even if 
the number of 
those I find my- 
self able to re- 
member were 
less insignificant. 
There are many 
that I delight in 
that I don't know, 
or at least that I 
don't keep, apart. 
Then there are 
the bad reasons 
for p r e f e r e n c e 



that are better 
than the good, 
and all the sweet 
bribery of associ- 
ation and recollection. These things, as one stands on the Salute 
steps, are so many delicate fingers to pick straight out of the row a 
dear little featureless house which, with its pale green shutters, looks 
straight across at the great door and through the very keyhole, as it 
were, of the church, and which I needn't call by a name — a pleasant 




GANZER — A RETIRED BOATMAN WHO ASSISTS GONDOLAS AT LANDING- 
PLACES. 



The Grand Canal M9 

American name — that everyone in Venice, these man y years, has had 
on grateful lips. It is the very friendliest house in all the wide world, 
and it has, as it deserves to have, the most beautiful position. It is 
a real porto di mare, as the gondoliers say — a port within a port; it 
sees everything that comes and goes, and takes it all in with prac- 
tised eyes. Not a tint or a hint of the immense iridescence is lost 
upon it, and there are days of exquisite color on which it may fancy 
itself the heart of the wonderful prism. We wave to it, from the 
Salute steps, which we must decidedly leave if we wish to get on, a 
grateful hand across the water, and turn into the big white church 
of Longhena — an empty shaft beneath a perfunctory dome — where 
an American family and a German party, huddled in a corner upon 
a pair of benches, are gazing, with a conscientiousness worthy of a 
better cause, at nothing in particular. 

For there is nothing particular, in this cold and conventional 
temple, to gaze at save the great Tintoretto of the sacristy, to which 
we quickly pay our respects, and which we are glad to have, for ten 
minutes, to ourselves. The picture, though full of beauty, is not 
the finest of the master's ; but it serves again as well as another to 
transport (there is no other word) those of his lovers for whom, in 
far-away years when Venice was an early rapture, this strange and 
mystifying painter was almost the supreme revelation. The plastic 
arts may have less to say to us than in the hungry years of youth, 
and the celebrated picture, in general, be more of a blank ; but 
more than the others any fine Tintoret still carries us back, calling 
up not only the rich particular vision but the freshness of the old 
wonder. Many things come and go, but this great artist remains 
for ns, in Venice, a part of the company of the mind. The others 
are there in their obvious glory, but he is the only one for whom 
the imagination, in our expressive modern phrase, sits up. The 
Marriage in Cana, at the Salute, has all his characteristic and fas- 
cinating unexpectedness — the sacrifice of the figure of our Lord, 
who is reduced to the mere final point of a clever perspective, and 



150 The Grand Canal 

the free, joyous presentation of all the other elements of the feast. 
Why, in spite of this queer one-sidedness, does the picture give us 
no impression of a lack of what the critics call reverence ? For no 
other reason that I can think of than because it happens to be the 
• work of its author, in whose very mistakes there is a singular wis- 
dom. Mr. Buskin has spoken with sufficient eloquence of the 
serious loveliness of the row of heads of the women, on the right, 
who talk to each other as they sit at the foreshortened banquet. 
There could be no better example of the roving independence of the 
painter's vision, a real spirit of adventure, for which his subject was 
always a cluster of accidents ; not an obvious order, but a sort of 
peopled and agitated chapter of life, in which the figures are sub- 
missive pictorial notes. These notes are all there, in their beauty 
and heterogeneity, and if the abundance is of a kind to make the 
principle of selection seem in comparison timid, yet the sense of 
" composition," in the spectator (if it happen to exist), reaches out 
to the painter in peculiar symjmthy. Dull must be the spirit of the 
worker tormented, in any field of art, with that particular question, 
who is not moved to recognize, in the eternal problem, the high 
fellowship of Tintoretto. 

If the long reach from this point to the deplorable iron bridge 
which discharges the pedestrian at the Academy — or, more compre- 
hensively, to the painted and gilded Gothic of the noble Palazzo 
Foscari — is too much of a curve to be seen at any one point as a 
whole, it represents the better the arched neck, as it were, of the 
undulating serpent of which the Canalazzo has the likeness. We 
pass a dozen historic houses, we note in our passage a hundred com- 
ponent "bits," with the baffled sketcher's sense, and with what 
would doubtless be, save for our intensely Venetian fatalism, the 
baffled sketcher's temper. It is the early palaces, of course, and also, 
to be fair, some of the late, if we could take them one by one, that 
give the Canal the best of its grand air. The fairest are often cheek- 
by-jowl with the foulest, and there are few, alas, so fair as to have 




«c 



*aj 



p/ 






-<**<**-. 




152 The Grand Canal 

been completely protected by their beauty. The ages and the gen- 
erations have worked their will upon them, and the wind and the 
weather have had much to say ; but disfigured and dishonored as 
they are, with the bruises of their marbles and the patience of their 
ruin, there is nothing like them in the world, and the long succes- 
sion of their faded, conscious faces makes of the quiet water-way 
they overhang a promenade historique of which the lesson, however 
often we read it, gives, in the depth of its interest, an incomparable 
dignity to Venice. We read it in the Romanesque arches, crooked 
to-day in their very curves, of the early middle-age, in the exquisite 
individual Gothic of the splendid time, and in the cornices and col- 
uinns of a decadence almost as proud. These things at present are 
almost equally touching in their good faith, they have each in their 
degree so effectually parted with theb pride. They have lived on 
as they could and lasted as they might, and we hold them to no 
account of their infirmities, for even those of them whose blank 
eyes, to-day, meet criticism with most submission, are far less vul- 
gar than the uses we have mainly managed to put them to. We 
have botched them and patched them and covered them with sordid 
signs ; we have restored and improved them with a merciless taste, 
and the best of them we have made over to the pedlers. Some of 
the most striking objects in the finest vistas, at present, are the 
huge advertisements of the curiosity-shops. 

The antiquity-mongers, in Venice, have all the courage of their 
opinion, and it is easy to see how well they know they can con- 
found you with an unanswerable question. What is the whole 
place but a curiosity-shop, and what are you here for yourself but 
to pick up odds and ends ? " We pick them up for you," say these 
honest Jews, whose prices are marked in dollars, " and who shall 
blame us if, the flowers being pretty well plucked, we add an arti- 
ficial rose or two to enhance the bouquet ? " They take care, in a 
word, that there be plenty of relics, and their establishments are 
huge and active. They administer the antidote to pedantry, and 



The Grand Canal 153 

you can complain of them only if you never cross their thresholds. 
If you take this step you are lost, for you have parted with the cor- 
rectness of your attitude. Venice becomes, frankly, from such a 
moment, the big, depressing, dazzling joke in which, after all, our 
sense of her contradictions sinks to rest — the grimace of an over- 
strained philosophy. It's rather a comfort, for the curiosity shops 
are amusing. You have bad moments, indeed, as you stand in 
their halls of humbug and, in the intervals of haggling, hear, 
through the high windows, the soft plash of the sea on the old 
watersteps, for you think with anger of the noble homes that are 
laid waste in such scenes, of the delicate lives that must have been, 
that might still be, led there. You reconstruct the admirable 
house according to your own needs; leaning on a back balcony, 
you drop your eyes into one of the little green gardens with which, 
for the most part, such establishments are cxasperatingly blessed, 
and end by feeling it a shame that you yourself are not in posses- 
sion. (I take for granted, of course, that as you go and come you 
are, in imagination, perpetually lodging yourself and setting up 
your gods ; for if this innocent pastime, this borrowing of the mind, 
is not your favorite sport, then • is a Haw in the appeal that Venice 
makes to you.) There may lie happy cases in which your envy is 
tempered, or perhaps I should rather say intensified, by real partici- 
pation. If you have had the good fortune to enjoy the hospitality 
of an old Venetian home, and to had your life a little in the paint- 
ed chambers that still echo with one of the historic names, you 
have entered by the shortest step into the inner spirit of the place. 
If it didn't savor of treachery to private kindness, I should like to 
speak frankly of one of these delightful, even though alienated, struct- 
ures, to refer to it as a splendid example of the old palatial type. 
But I can only do so in passing, with a hundred precautions, and, 
lifting the curtain at the edge, drop a commemorative word on the 
success with which, in this particularly happy instance, the cosmo- 
politan habit, the modern sympathy, the intelligent, flexible at- 



154 The Grand Canal 

titude, the latest fruit of time, adjust themselves to the great, gilded, 
relinquished shell, and try to fill it out. A Venetian palace that 
has not too grossly suffered, and that is not overwhelming by its 
mass, makes almost any life graceful that may be led in it. With 
cultivated and generous contemporary ways it reveals a pre-estab- 
lished harmony. As you live in it, day after day its beauty and its 
interest sink more deeply into your spirit ; it has its moods and its 
hours, and its m) 7 stic voices, and its shifting expressions. If in the 
absence of its masters you have happened to have it to yourself for 
twenty-four hours, you will never forget the charm of its haunted 
stillness, late on the summer afternoon, for . instance, when the call 
of playing children comes in behind from the campo, nor the way 
the old ghosts seemed to pass on tip-toe on the marble floors. It 
gives you practically the essence of the matter that we are consid- 
ering, for beneath the high balconies Venice comes and goes, and 
the particular stretch you command contains all the characteristics. 
Everything has its turn, from the heavy barges of merchandise, 
pushed by long poles from the patient shoulder, to the floating pa- 
vilions of the great serenades, and you may study at your leisure the 
admirable Venetian arts of managing a boat and organizing a spec- 
tacle. Of the beautiful free stroke with which the gondola, especially 
when there are two oars, is impelled, you never, in the Venetian 
scene, grow weary ; it is alwa_ys in the picture, and the large, profiled 
action with which the standing rowers throw themselves forward 
with a constant recovery has the double value of being, at the fag- 
end of greatness, the only energetic note. The people from the 
hotels are always afloat, and, at the hotel pace, the solitary gondo- 
lier (like the solitary horseman of the old-fashioned novel) is, I con- 
fess, a somewhat melancholy figure. Perched on his poop without 
a mate, he re-enacts perpetually, iu high relief, with his toes turned 
out, the comedy of his odd and charming movement. He always 
has a little the look of an absent-minded nursery-maid pushing her 
small charges in a perambulator. 



156 The Grand Canal 

But why should I risk too free a comparison, where this pictu- 
resque and amiable class are concerned ? I delight in their sun- 
burnt complexions and their childish dialect ; I know them only by 
their merits, and I am grossly prejudiced in their favor. They arc 
interesting and touching, and alike in their virtues and their defects 
human nature is simplified, as with a big effective brush. Affecting 
above all is their dependence on the stranger, the whimsical stranger 
who swims out of their ken, yet whom Providence sometimes re- 
stores. The best of them, at any rate, are in their line great artists. 
On the swarming feast-days, on the strange feast-night of the 
Eedentore, their steering is a miracle of ease. The master-hands, 
the celebrities and winners of prizes (you may see them on the 
private gondolas in spotless white, with brilliant sashes and rib- 
bons, and often with very handsome persons), take the right of way 
with a pardonable insolence. They penetrate the crush of boats 
with an authority of their own. The crush of boats, the universal 
sociable bumping and squeezing, is great when, on the summer 
nights, the ladies shriek with alarm, tlie city pays the fiddlers, and 
the illuminated barges, scattering music and song, lead a long train 
down the Canal. The barges used to be rowed in rhythmic strokes, 
but now they are towed by the steamer. The colored lamps, the 
vocalists before the hotels, are not, to my sense, the greatest seduc- 
tion of Venice ; but it would be an uncandid sketch of the Canal- 
azzo that should not touch them with indulgence. Taking one 
nuisance with another, they are probably the prettiest in the world, 
and if they have, in general, more magic for the new arrival than 
for the old Venice-lover, they at all events, at their best, keep up 
the immemorial tradition. The Venetians have had, from the be- 
ginning of time, the pride of their processions and spectacles, and 
it's a wonder how, with empty pockets, they still make a clever 
show. The carnival is dead, but these are the scraps of its inheri- 
tance. Van shall on the water is of course more Vauxhall than ever, 
with the good fortune of home-made music, and of a mirror that 



The Grand Canal 



157 



reduplicates and multiplies. The feast of the Eedeemer — the great 
popular feast of the year— is a wonderful Venetian Vauxhall. All 
Venice, on this occasion, takes to the boats for the night, and loads 
them with lamps and provisions. Wedged together in a mass, it 
sups and sings ; every boat is a floating arbor, a private cafe-concert. 
Of all Christian commemorations it is the most ingenuouslv and 




' ..,VJ ■;,, <\p ' r-; 



DINSEK TIME— TTPE OF GONDOLlElt. 



harmlessly pagan. Toward morning the passengers repair to the 
Lido, where, as the sun rises, they plunge, still sociably, into the 
sea. The night of the Kedentore has been described, but it would 
be interesting to have an account, from the domestic point of view, 
of its usual morrow. It is mainly an affair of the Giudecca, how- 
ever, which is bridged over from the Zattere to the great church. 
The pontoons are laid together during the day — it is all done with 
extraordinary celerity and art — and the bridge is prolonged across 



158 The Grand Canal 

the Canalazzo (to Santa Maria Zobenigo), Which is my only warrant 
for glancing at the occasion. We glance at it from our palace 
windows ; lengthening our necks a little, as we look up toward the 
Salute, we see all Venice, on the July afternoon, so serried as to 
move slowly, pouring across the temporary footway. It is a flock 
of very good children, and the bridged Canal is their toy. All 
Venice, on such occasions, is gentle and friendly, not even all 
Venice pushes anyone into the water. 

But from the same high windows we catch, without any stretch- 
ing of the neck, a still more indispensable note in the picture, a fa- 
mous pretender eating the bread of bitterness. This repast is 
served in the open air, on a neat little terrace, by attendants in liv- 
ery, and there is no indiscretion in our seeing that the pretender 
dines. Ever since the table d'hote in " Candide," Venice has been 
the refuge of monarchs in want of thrones — she wouldn't know her- 
self without her rois en exit. The exile is agreeable and soothing, 
the gondola lets them down gently. Its movement is an anodyne, 
its silence is a philtre, and little by little it rocks all ambitions to 
sleep. The proscript has plenty of leisure to write his proclama- 
tions, and even his memoirs, and I believe he has organs in which 
they are published ; but the only noise he makes in the world is the 
harmless splash of his oars. He comes and goes along the Ca- 
nalazzo, and he might be much worse employed. He is but one of 
the interesting objects it presents, however, and I am by no means 
sure that he is the most striking. He has a rival, if not in the iron 
bridge, which, alas, is within our range, at least (to take an imme- 
diate example) in the Montecuculi Palace. Far descended and 
weary, but beautiful in its crooked old age, with its lovely propor- 
tions, its delicate round arches, its carvings and its disks of marble, 
is the haunted Montecuculi. Those who have a kindness for Vene- 
tian gossip like to remember that it was once, for a few months, the 
property of Robert Browning, who, however, never lived in it, and 
who died in the splendid Bezzonico, the residence of his son and a 



The Grand Canal 



159 



wonderful cosmopolitan "document," which, as it presents itself, in 
an admiral ilc position, but a short way farther down the Canal, we 
can almost see, in spite of the curve, from the window at which we 
stand. Tbis great seventeenth century pile, throwing itself upon 
the water with a peculiar florid assurance, a certain upward toss of 
its cornice which gives it the air of a rearing sea-horse, decorates 



is^.i 




TRAGHETTO— A PASSAGEWAY OF THE GUAND CANAL. 



immensely (and within, as well as without) the wide angle tbat it 
commands. 

There is a more formal greatness in the high, square, Gothic 
Foscari, just below r it, one of the noblest creations of the fifteenth 
century, a masterpiece of symmetry and majesty. Dedicated to-day 
to official uses (it is the property of the state), it looks conscious of 
the consideration it enjoys, and is one of the few great houses with- 



160 The Grand Canal 

in our range whose old age strikes us as robust and painless. It is 
visibly " kept up ; " perhaps it is kept up too much ; perhaps I am 
wrong in thinking so well of it. These doubts and fears course rap- 
idly through my mind (I am easily their victim when it is a ques- 
tion of architecture), as they are apt to do to-day, in Italy, almost 
anywhere, in the presence of the beautiful, of the desecrated, or the 
neglected. We feel at such moments as if the eye of Mr. Ruskin 
were upon us; we grow nervous and lose our confidence. This 
makes me inevitably, in talking of Venice, seek a pusillanimous 
safety in the trivial and the obvious. I am on firm ground in re- 
joicing in the little garden directly opposite our windows (it is 
another proof that they really show us everything), and in feeling 
that the gardens of Venice would deserve a page to themselves. 
They are infinitely more numerous than the arriving stranger can 
suppose ; they nestle, with a charm all their own, in the complica- 
tions of most back-views. Some of them are exquisite, many are 
large, and even the scrappiest have an artful understanding, in the in- 
terest of color, with the waterways that edge their foundations. On 
the small canals, in the hunt for amusement, they are the prettiest 
surprises of all. The tangle of plants and flowers climbs over the 
battered walls, the greenness makes an arrangement with the rosy, 
sordid brick. Of all the reflected and liquefied things in Venice, 
and the number of these is countless, I think the lapping water 
loves them most. They are numerous on the Canalazzo, but where- 
ever they occur they give a brush to the picture, and in particular, 
it is easy to guess, they give a sweetness to the house. Then the 
elements are complete — the trio of air and water and of things that 
grow. Venice without them would be too much a matter of the 
tides and the stones. Even the little trellises of the tragi/effi count 
charmingly as reminders, amid so much artifice, of the woodland 
nature of man. The vine-leaves, trained on horizontal poles, make 
a roof of chequered shade for the gondoliers and ferrymen, who 
doze there, according to opportunity, or chatter or hail the ap- 



The Grand Canal 161 

preaching " fare." There is no " huni " in Venice, so that their 
voices travel far ; the}' enter your windows and mingle even with 
yom 1 dreams. I beg the reader to believe that if I had time to go 
into everything, I would go into the traghetti, which have their man- 
ners and their morals, and which used to have their piety. This 
piety was always a madoninna, the protectress of the passage — a 
quaint figure of the Virgin with the red spark of a lamp at her feet. 
The lamps appear for the most part to have gone out, and the 
images doubtless have been sold for hrid-a-brac. The ferrymen, for 
a aght I know, are converted to Nihilism — a faith consistent, happily, 
with a good stroke of business. One of the figures has been left, 
however — the Madonnetta, which gives its name to a traghetto near 
the Bialto. But this sweet survivor is a carven stone, inserted ages 
ago in the corner of an old palace, and doubtless difficult of removal. 
Pazienzn, the day will come when so marketable a relic will also be 
extracted from its socket and piuchased by the devouring American. 
I leave that expression, on second thought, standing ; but I rej^ent 
of it when I remember that it is a devouring American — a lady long 
resident in Venice ami whose kindnesses all Venetians, as well as 
her country people, know, who has rekindled some of the extin- 
guished tapers, setting up especially the big brave Gothic shrine, of 
painted and gilded wood, which, on the top of its stout polo, sheds 
its influence on the place of passage opposite the Salute. 

If I may not go into those of the palaces this devious discourse 
has left behind, much less may I enter the great galleries of the 
Academy, which rears its blank wall, surmounted by the lion of St. 
Mark, well within sight of the windows at which we are still linger- 
ing. This wondrous temple of Venetian art (for all it promises lit- 
tle from without) overhangs, in a manner, the Grand Canal, but if 
we were so much as to cross its threshold we should wander beyond 
recall. It contains, in some of the most magnificent halls (where 
the ceilings have aU the glory with which the imagination of Venice 
alone could over-arch a room), some of the noblest pictures in the 



The Grand Canal 163 

world ; and whether or not we go back to them on any particular oc- 
casion for another look, it is always a comfort to know that they are 
there, for the sense of them, on the spot, is a part of the furniture 
of the mind — the sense of them close at hand, behind every wall and 
under every cover, like the inevitable reverse of a medal, of the side 
exposed to the air reflecting, intensifying, completing the scene. 
In other words, as it was the inevitable destiny of Venice to be 
painted, and painted with passion, so the wide world of picture be- 
comes, as we live there, and however much we go about our affairs, 
the constant habitation of our thoughts. The truth is, we are in it 
so uninterruptedly, at home and abroad, that there is scarcely a 
pressure upon us to seek it in one place more than another. Choose 
your standpoint at random and trust the picture to come to you. 
This is manifestly why I have not, I become aware, said more about 
the features of the Canalazzo which occupy the reach between the 
Salute and the position we have so obstinately taken up. It is still 
there before us, however, and the delightful little Palazzo Dario, in- 
timately familiar to English and American travellers, picks itself 
out in the foreshortened brightness. The Dario is covered with the 
loveliest little marble plates and sculptured circles ; it is made up 
of exquisite pieces (as if there had been only enough to make it 
small), so that it looks, in its extreme antiquity, a good deal like a 
house of cards that hold together by a tenure that it would be fatal 
to touch. An old Venetian house dies hard, indeed, and I should 
add that this delicate thing, with submission in every feature, con- 
tinues to resist the contact of generations of lodgers. It is let out in 
floors — it used to be let as a whole — and in how many eager hands 
(for it is in great requisition), under how many fleeting disj)ensa- 
tions have we not known and loved it ? People are always writing 
in advance to secure it, as they are to secure the Jenkins's gon- 
dolier, and as the gondola passes we see strange faces at the 
windows (though it's ten to one we recognize them), and the mill- 
ionth artist coming forth with his traps at the water-gate. The 



164 The Grand Canal 

poor little patient Dario is one of the most flourishing booths at 
the fair. 

The faces at the -window look out at the great Sansovino — the 
splendid pile that is now occupied by the Prefect. I feel decidedly 
that I don't object as I ought to the palaces of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries. Their pretensions impose upon me, and the 
imagination peoples them more freely than it can people the interi- 
ors of the prime. Was not, moreover, this masterpiece of Sansovino 
once occupied by the Venetian post-office, and thereby intimately 
connected with an ineffaceable first impression of the author of these 
remarks ? He had arrived, wondering, palpitating, twenty-three 
years ago, after nightfall, and, the first thing on the morrow, had 
repaired to the post-office for his letters. They had been waiting a 
long time and were full of delayed interest, and he returned with 
them to the gondola and floated slowly down the Canal. The mixt- 
ure, the rapture, the wonderful temple of the poste. restante, the 
beautiful strangeness, all humanized by good news — the memory of 
this abides with him still, so that there always proceeds from the 
splendid water-front I speak of a certain secret appeal, something 
that seems to have been uttered first in the sonorous chambers of 
youth. Of course this association falls to the ground — or rather 
splashes into the water — if I am the victim of a confusion. Was the 
edifice in question twenty- three years ago the post-office, which has 
occupied since, for many a day, very much humbler quarters '? I 
am afraid to take the proper steps for finding out, lest I shovdd leam 
that, for all these years, I have misdirected my emotion. A better 
reason for the sentiment, at any rate, is that such a great house has 
surely, in the high beauty of its tiers, a refinement of its own. They 
make one thick of colosseums and aqueducts and bridges, and they 
constitute doubtless, in Venice, the most pardonable specimen of 
the imitative. I have even a timid kindness for the huge Pesaro, 
far down the Canal, whose main reproach, more even than the 
coarseness of its forms, is its swaggering size, its want of considera- 



The Grand Canal 



165 



tion for the general picture, which the early examples so reverently 
respect. The Pesaro is as far out of the frame as a modern hotel, 
and the Cornaro, close to it, oversteps almost equally the modesty 




FISHMONGERS. 



of art. One more thing they and their kindred do, I must add, for 
which, unfortunately, we can patronize them less. They make even 
the most elaborate material civilization of the present day seem 
wofully shrunken and bourgeois, for they simply (I allude to the 
biggest palaces) cannot be lived in as they were intended to be. 



166 



The Grand Canal 




5 T ^fyvrJin. 



The modern 

tenant may take in 

all the magazines, but 

he bends not the bow of Achilles. 

He occupies the place, but he 

doesn't fill it, and he has guests from the neighboring inns with 

ulsters and Badekers. 



THE EEIDGE OF THE EIALTO. 



The Grand Canal 167 

We are far, at the Pesaro, by the way, from our attaching 
window, and we take advantage of it to go in rather a melancholy 
mood to the end. The long straight vista froni the Foscari to the 
Bialto, the great middle stretch of the Canal, contains, as the phrase 
is, a hundred objects of interest, but it contains most the bright 
oddity of its general deluged air. In all these centuries it has 
never got over its resemblance to a flooded city ; for some reason or 
other it is the only part of Venice in which the houses look as if 
the waters had overtaken them. Everywhere else they reckon with 
them — they have chosen them ; here alor.e the lapping seaway 
seems to confess itself an accident. 

There are persons who think this long, gay, shabby, spotty per- 
spective, in which, with its immense field of confused reflection, the 
houses have infinite variety, the dullest expanse in Tenice. It was 
not dull, we imagine, for Lord Byron, who lived in the midmost of 
the three Moeenigo palaces, where the writing-table is still shown 
at which he gave the rein to his passions. For other observers it 
is sufficiently enlivened by so delightful a creation as the Palazzo 
Loredan, once a masterpiece and at present the Mimicipio, not to 
speak of a variety of other immemorial bits whose beauty still has 
a kind of freshness. Home of the most touching relics of early Ven- 
ice are here (for it was here she precariously clustered), peeping out 
of a submersion more pitiless than the sea. As we approach the 
Pdalto, indeed, the picture falls off and a comparative commonness 
suffuses it. There is a wide paved walk on either side of the Canal, 
on which the waterman — and who, in Venice, is not a waterman ? — 
is prone to seek repose. I speak of the summer days — it is the 
summer Venice that is the visible Venice. The big tarry barges are 
drawn up at the fondamerrfa, and the bare-legged boatmen, in faded 
blue cotton, lie asleep on the hot stones. If there were no color 
anywhere else, there would be enough in their tanned personalities. 
Half the low doorways open into the warm interior of waterside 
drinking-shops, and here and there, on the quay, beneath the bush 



168 The Grand Canal 

that overhangs the door, there are rickety tables and chairs. Where 
in Venice is there not the amusement of character and of detail ? 
The tone in this part is very vivid, and is largely that of the brown 
plebeian faces looking out of the patchy, miscellaneous houses — the 
faces of fat undressed women and of other simple folk who are not 
aware that they enjoy, from balconies once doubtless patrician, a 
view the knowing ones of the earth come thousands of miles to 
envy them. The effect is enhanced by the tattered clothes hung to 
dry in the windows, by the sun-faded rags that flutter from the 
polished balustrades (they are ivory-smooth with time) ; and the 
whole scene profits by the general law that renders decadence and 
ruin in Venice more brilliant than any prosperity. Decay, in this 
extraordinary place, is golden in tint, and misery is couleur de rose. 
The gondolas of the correct people are unmitigated sable, but the 
poor market-boats frjDm the islands are kaleidoscopic. 

The Bridge of the Bialto is a name to conjure with, but, honest- 
ly speaking, it is scarcely the gem of the composition. There are 
of course two ways of taking it — from the water or from the upper 
passage, where its small shops and booths abound in Venetian 
character ; but it mainly counts as a feature of the Canal when 
seen from the gondola or even from the awful vaporetto. The great 
curve of its single arch is much to be commended, especially when, 
coming from the direction of the railway station, you see it frame 
with its sharp compass-line the perfect picture, the reach of the 
Canal on the other side. But the backs of the little shops make, 
from the water, a graceless collective hump, and the inside view is 
the diverting one. The big arch of the bridge — like the arches of ail 
the bridges — is the waterman's friend in wet weather. The gondolas, 
when it rains, huddle beside the peopled barges, and the young 
ladies from the hotels, vaguely fidgeting, complain of the commu- 
nication of insect life. Here indeed is a little of everything, and the 
jewellers of this celebrated precinct (they have their immemorial 
row), make almost as fine a show as the fruiterers. It is a universal 



The Grand Canal 169 

market and a fine place to study Venetian types. The produce of 
the islands is discharged there, and the fishmongers announce their 
presence. All one's senses indeed are vigorously attacked, the 
whole place is violently hot and bright, and odorous and noisy. 
The churning of the screw of the vaporetto mingles with the other 
sounds — not indeed that this offensive note is confined to one part 




VAI'ORETTO — SMALL l'ASSENGER STEAMER n * THE GRAND CANAL. 

of the Canal. But just here the little piers of the resented steamer 
are particularly near together, and it seems, somehow, to be always 
kicking up the water. As we go farther down we see it stopping 
exactly beneath the glorious windows of the Ca' d' Oro. It has 
chosen its position well, and who shall gainsay it for having put it- 
self under the protection of the most romantic facade in Europe? 
The companionship of these objects is a symbol ; it expresses su- 
premely the present and the future of Venice. Perfect, in its prime, 
was the marble Ca' d' Oro, with the noble recesses of its loggie, but 



170 The Grand Canal 

even then it probably never " met a want," like the successful vapor- 
etto. If, however, we are not to go into the Museo Civico — the old 
Museo Correr, which rears a staring, renovated front far down on 
the left, near the station, so also we must keep out of the great 
vexed question of steam on the Canalazzo, just as, a while since, we 
prudently kept out of the Accademia. These are expensive and 
complicated excursions. It is obvious that if the vaporetti have 
contributed to the ruin of the gondoliers, already hard pressed by 
fate, and to that of the palaces, whose f oundations their waves under- 
mine, and that if they have robbed the Grand Canal of the supreme 
distinction of its tranquillity, so, on the other hand, they have placed 
" rapid transit," in the New York phrase, in everybody's reach, and 
enabled everybody (save indeed those who woiddn't for the world ) 
to rush about Venice as furiously as people rush about New York. 
The suitability of this consummation need not be pointed out. • 

Even we ourselves, in the irresistible contagion, are going so 
fast now that we have only time to note in how clever and costly a 
fashion the Museo Civico, the old Fondaco dei Turchi, has been 
reconstructed and restored. It is a glare of white marble without, 
and a series of showy majestic halls within, where a thousand cu- 
rious mementos and relics of old Venice are gathered and classi- 
fied. Of its miscellaneous treasures I fear that I perhaps frivo- 
lously prefer the series of its remarkable living Longhis, an illus- 
tration of manners more copious than the celebrated Carpaccio, the 
two ladies with their little animals and their long sticks. "Wonder- 
ful indeed, to-day, are the museums of Italy, where the renovations 
and the belle ordonnance speak of funds apparently unlimited, 
in spite of the fact that the numerous custodians, frankly, look 
starved. What is the pecuniary source of all this civic magnificence 
(it is shown in a hundred other ways), and how do the Italian cities 
manage to acquit themselves of expenses that would be formidable 
to communities richer and doubtless less aesthetic ? Who pays the 
bills for the expressive statues alone, the general exuberance of 



The Grand Canal 



171 



sculpture, with which every piazzetta of almost every village is 
patriotically decorated ? Let us not seek an answer to the puzzling 
question, but observe instead that we are passing the mouth of the 
populous Canareggio, next widest of the water-ways, where the race 
of Shylock abides, and at the corner of which the big colorless church 
of San Geremia stands gracefully enough on guard. The Canareg- 




A MOONLIGHT SERENADE— AT THE EIALTO BRIDGE. 

gio, with its wide lateral footways and humpbacked bridges, makes, 
on the feast of St. John, an admirable noisy, tawdry theatre for one 
of the prettiest and the most infantile of the Venetian processions. 
The rest of the way is a reduced magnificence, in spite of inter- 
esting bits, of the battered pomp of the Pesaro and the Cornaro, of 
the recurrent memories of royalty in exile which cluster about the 
Palazzo Yendrainin Calergi, once the residence of the Comte de 



172 The Grand Canal 

Chambord, and still that of his half-brother, in spite too of the 
big Papadopoli gardens, opposite the station, the largest private 
grounds in Venice, but of which Venice in general mainly gets 
the benefit in the usual form of irrepressible greenery climbing 
over walls and nodding at water. The rococo church of the 
Scalzi is here, all marble and malachite, all a cold, hard glitter and 
a costly, curly ugliness, and here too, opposite, on the top of its 
high steps, is San Simeone Profeta, I won't say immortalized, but 
unblushingly misrepresented, by the perfidious Canaletto. I shall 
not stay to unravel the mystery of this prosaic painter's malprac- 
tices ; he falsified without fancy, and as he apparently transposed at 
will the objects he reproduced, one is never sure of the particular 
view that may have constituted his subject. It would look exactly 
like such and such a place if almost everything were not different. 
San Simeone Profeta appears to hang there upon the wall ; but it 
is on the wrong side of the Canal and the other elements quite fail 
to correspond. One's confusion is the greater because one doesn't 
know that everything may not really have changed, even beyond 
all probability (though it's only in America that churches cross the 
street, or the river), and the mixture of the recognizable and the dif- 
ferent makes the ambiguity maddening, all the more that the painter 
is almost as fascinating as he is bad. Thanks, at any rate, to the 
white church, domed and porticoed, on the top of its steps, the 
traveller emerging for the first time upon the terrace of the railway 
station, seems to have a canaletto before him. He speedily dis- 
covers, indeed, even in the presence of this scene of the final accents 
of the Canalazzo (there is a charm in the old pink warehouses on 
the hot fondamenta), that he has something much better. He looks 
up and down at the gathered gondolas ; he has his surprise after 
all, his little first Venetian thrill; and as the terrace of the station 
ushers in these things we shall say no harm of it, though it is not 
lovely. It is the beginning of his ex23erience, but it is the end of 
the Grand Canal. 



UNTER DEN LINDEN 
By Paul Lindau 

THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. STAHL 




*-r* 



■FU/jStMIhm 



A MESSEXGER. 



UNTER DEN LINDEN 



THE streets of aristocratic West Berlin, the Thiergarten, are 
unquestionably more cheerful and agreeable, and the great 
business artery of the city itself, Leipziger Strasse, beats 
with a quicker life, than Unter den Linden — that is the somewhat 
old-fashioned, though pleasant and pretty, name which the greatest 
street of Berlin still bears officially ; but the Linden, as we usually 
call it for convenience, has nevertheless remained the representa- 
tive, the most characteristic and important street in the capital of 
Prussia and of the German Empire. The Linden is indicative of 
Berlin in its original design and in its transformation ; significant 
in its reminders of the past and memorials of the present ; in what 
has been preserved and done away with, in what has been over- 
thrown and created. It is a monumental image of our city and 
national life ; an epitome of Prussian history in enduring stone and 
also in cheap stucco. 

The Linden cuts straight as a line through the heart of the city. 
The founders of Berlin must have been extraordinarily far-seeing 
and clever people, or they could not have given this particular 
street, anticipating its future at the very outset, the essential con- 
ditions for a principal thoroughfare : a suitable width, and a termi- 
nation, at one end of impressive architecture, and at the other of 
attractive landscape. For it is only very recently, by reason of the 



176 U liter den Linden 

enormous advance which Berlin has made in the last twenty-rive 
years, the new quarter which has sprung up toward the west, and 
the radical change in the ground plan of the city, that the Linden 
has gained that central position which rightfully belongs to the 
most important and significant street. 

The growth of Berlin is unparalleled in Europe. To find its 
counterpart, we must cross the ocean and behold those infant prod- 
igies, the American cities, which, while as yet babies scarcely out of 
the cradle, attain the stature, the strength, and together with these, 
of course, the requisite consciousness of manhood. 

In my boyhood the Linden marked the outermost limits of the 
city proper. Then — I am speaking of forty years ago — the glory of 
Berlin ceased altogether at the Brandenburg Gate. In the Thier- 
garten, on the bank of the Spree, were a couple of big factories ; and 
all around were public-houses, open simply in the summer, where 
family-parties could boil the coffee that they brought themselves. 
There under the trees sat the respectable townsfolk, drinking thin 
coffee or still thinner beer, the wives and daughters with knitting 
and embroidery ; and everybody, after the burden and heat of the 
day, gulped down the dust which the slightest breath of wind raised 
in thick columns along the then unpaved sandy roads. 

The principal place of amusement at that time, KroU's establish- 
ment, was still " outside," in idyllic proximity to the beer-gardens, 
" die Zelten." In the more northern part of the Thiergarten, toward 
Potsdamer Strasse, the houses were almost without exception small 
and simple, hidden away in quiet little gardens, and very generally 
were unoccupied in winter, being used as summer residences through 
the hot weather. The whole Thiergarten had a thoroughly rural, 
un-citified air. The adjoining districts, Moabit and Liitzow, were 
villages. All this modest rusticity and provinciality has been mowed 
down by the last twenty years. Imposing quarters of the city, with 
great wide streets and huge buildings, have shot up out of the 
ground, joined themselves on to the limits of the older Berlin, and 



ill 




■■ 




%C±r- 



Per //> 



.,-! ' 



UHTEK DEJi LIKDEN," 



Unter den Linden 179 

now form with it one unbroken whole. At present, consequently, 
the Linden lies actually in the very centre of the city. 

Straight, therefore, as the alignment at parade — as befits the 
Prussian capital — runs the Linden from the west, the Thiergarten, 
and the Brandenburg Gate, toward the east and the Royal Castle. 
In speaking of the Linden, I always include its eastern extremities, 
the Ojiemplatz, the Sehlossbriicke, and Lustgarten, which are an 
integral part of it and form its natural conclusion. 

The beginning and the end of the Linden are ecjually indicative 
of our Prussian personality. Xo sooner have we passed through 
the haughty pillars of the Brandenbmg Gate — crowned by its tro- 
phy. Victory in her four-horse chariot — than we are greeted, in the 
little Greek wing upon the right, by the Guard-house. The name 
of the square that forms, hi a certain sense, the portico of the Lin- 
den, Pariser Platz, brings before us the entrance into Paris, the 
triumphant close of the War of Liberation, 1813-1815. And if the 
designation has grown so familiar that we are inclined to overlook 
its implication, we shall be reminded of it by the name of the first 
stately residence that we now behold. It is the Bliicher Palace. 
We saunter along. At our left the eye is met by a striking building 
of huge proportions. From its open windows officers are gazing, 
who here permit themselves the luxury of half-unbuttoned coats. 
That is the Academy of War. When we reach the end of the 
Linden, we shall see the severe Roman architecture of the Main 
Guard-house, one of Schinkel's well-known works, and close to it the 
wonderful Renaissance building of Sckluter, perhaps the most beau- 
tiful structure in all Berlin, called formerly the Arsenal, but now 
the Hall of Fame. 

A trophy of victory at the beginning, soldiers at the right, 
soldiers at the left, soldiers at the end, and a temple of trophies for 
conclusion ; can one imagine a street more indicative of the mo- 
narchical militarism of our State ? 

In perfect harmony with this are the monuments that adorn the 



ISO 



V liter den Linden 



Linden. On the Pariser Platz there is as yet no statue. The 
Berliners believe that sooner or later Bismarck and Moltke are to 




THE KAISEK, UNTER DEN LINDEN. 



be here immortalized in marble and bronze. For a while vet, per- 
haps, we are scarcely willing to inconvenience the French Embassy 
— whose palace has been assigned by an irony of fate to this place 
of all places, upon a square whose very name tells of the overthrow 



Unter den Linden 181 

of the nation represented by that Embassy — by thrusting under its 
nose the statues of the two men most feared and hated by every 
living Frenchman. As soon, however, as we enter the middle 
promenade of the Linden, we see in the distance Eauch's equestrian 
statue of Frederick the Great, towering upon a huge pedestal, and 
overtopping a crowd of generals, the four most famous of whom 
leap out on horseback from the four corners. The native wit of 
the Berliners naturally observed at once that the great intellectual 
heroes of Frederick's time — Immanuel Kant and Gotthold Ephraim 
Lessing — have found their place on the side turned toward the 
Brandenburg Gate, under the tail of the horse. 

The other statues, too, which adorn the Linden and its extremi- 
ties, glorify exclusively the monarchical and military Prussia. The 
figure of Frederick "William III. stands somewhat at one side, con- 
cealed in the pretty grounds of the Lustgarten. More in keeping 
with the Linden itself, and in proper proportion to the honors paid 
by the nation, is the prominence given to the statues of the gener- 
als who during the reign of Frederick William III. won those im- 
mortal victories ; Bliicher, a masterpiece of Bauch, on the Opern- 
platz, near York and Gneisenau, all three in bronze ; and upon the 
other side, to the right and left of the Main Guard-house, the mar- 
hie figures of Bulow and Hcharnhorst. 

Unter den Linden is the king of streets, and likewise the street 
( if kings. A royal palace upon the Boulevards would seem odd in 
the French capital, where during the last century the sovereigns 
never, as it were, played anything but limited engagements, longer 
or shorter. In the capital of Prussia, however, which owes its 
development and greatness to the personal qualities of its monarchs 
— to their ability on the battle-field and in affairs of state, their pru- 
dence and economy — the palaces of its rulers nmst naturally be the 
most important and noteworthy buildings upon its principal street. 
And we find actually in Unter clen Linden the royal residences of 
more than one generation of our kings ; of father, son, and grandson. 



182 Unter den Linden 

Each of the three emperors, whom the fatal year 1888 saw upon 
the Prussian throne, has his own palace on the Linden. The 
massive, gloomy, vast structure of the old Castle — essentially the 
work of the foremost German architect, Andreas Schliiter — whose 
giant proportions bear witness to the immutable confidence of the 
founders of the monarchy in the future grandeur of their country, 
gives to our great street an architectural conclusion that is at once 
forcible and defiant. In the oldest part of the Castle, which brings 
a slight breath of the middle ages into a city otherwise so modern, 
in the round, green -roofed tower and the mossy walls, mirrored 
dimly in the gray water of the lazy-flowing Spree, one can still rec- 
ognize that this magnificent royal seat has sprung from the old 
Hohenzollernbm'g. The round tower, called the " green hat," which 
leans against the haughty, huge pile, symbolizes in a certain fashion 
the whole history of our Prussian kings, and reminds us that our 
young German Emperor, who has made the old Castle a royal resi- 
dence once more, traces his ancestry to the Burgraves of Zollern. 

The father of our Emperor, the deeply lamented, unfortunate 
Frederick III., lived, when he was Crown Prince, in the finely sit- 
uated palace, of somewhat questionable architecture, which we find 
upon the left, opposite the Hall of Fame, when we come from the 
Castle across the bridge, and approach the Linden proper. Every- 
body calls it the Crown Prince's Palace, and here, as " Crown 
Prince Fritz," the ill-fated man spent the sunniest and happiest 
days of his life. As Emperor, devoted to a certain death, he en- 
tered it but a very few times, amid the indescribably touching accla- 
mations of his beloved Berliners, who, upon tidings that the suffer- 
ing Emperor had left his sick-room at Charlottenburg, and wished 
to see once more his old residence, the Linden, and the Berliners, 
streamed together from every quarter of the city into Unter den 
Linden with lightning-like rapidity, in masses so dense that life 
was endangered, and in delirious outcries gave heart-rending expres- 
sion to their veneration and love for the noble sovereign. Some of 



U liter den Linden 1S3 

the chief data for our street-chronicle are furnished by those June 
days of 1888. At present the Crown Prince's Palace is for the most 
part deserted. The Empress Frederick does not feel at home in 
those splendid apartments, where everything reminds her of her 
husband. 

Upon the same side, the first building on the real Linden, stands 
a plain, entirely unpretentious house, of tasteful proportions and of 
the simplest utilitarian style. There is but a single full story above 
the ground-floor. The windows of the servants' quarters in the low 
uppermost story are concealed as much as possible by unobtrusive 
ornamentation. Above the two corner pillars of the house the eagle 
lifts itself upon unfolded wings. The entrance is under a portico, 
which forms also a balcony for the upper story. That is the resi- 
dence of our great Emperor William and Empress Augusta, and 
was called formerly the Palace of the Prince of Prussia, later the 
Royal, and at last the Imperial Palace. It is an ambitious name for 
a very modest affair. The Imperial Palace is surpassed in size and 
splendor by man)' private houses of men who are — or would like to 
be — members of our Council of Commerce. The Emperor — when 
we speak of " the Emperor " without further designation, we always 
mean Emperor William I., just as among the common people "the 
Chancellor" still is Pismarck, and " the Field-marshal " is ever Moltke 
— the Emperor occupied the ground floor, while the apartments of 
the Empress Augusta, and also the reception-rooms for small as- 
semblies, were upon the floor above. On the corner, looking out 
upon the Opernplatz and the Linden, was the working-room — plain 
as the house itself, though crammed full of all sorts of personal re- 
membrances and gifts — where the Emperor used to pass the greater 
part of the day. It was here that he used to show himself at the 
window, the famous " corner-window," as it was called ; in fact 
quite regularly, at the stroke of twelve, when the soldiers on duty 
were relieved at the Royal Guard-house, and marched past to the 
music of drum and fife under the eyes of their sovereign. At this. 



184 Unter den Linden 

hour of the day thousands of people always gathered in front of the 
Palace, and when the Emperor appeared, gave him a clamorous, 
hearty greeting. Occasionally these popular assemblages had the 
demonstrative character of an homage peculiarly deferential and sin- 
cere. Especially was this the case whenever the Emperor returned 
from his summer jotniiey or from visiting another sovereign, and 
also on the festal days of the royal family, particularly his own 
birthday. 

In the closing years of Emperor William's life, when inexorable 
old age shook that gnarled trunk, and he was now and then com- 
pelled, by his physical condition and the commands of the attend- 
ant physicians, to depart from those life-long customs which had 
grown so familiar to all Berliners, the gathering of the people in 
front of the corner-window had an especial significance. When the 
report ran : " The Emperor is ill," " The Emperor must keep his 
bed," the crowds around the statue of Frederick the Great were 
heaped together in impenetrable masses. When the ring of the 
guards' marching music was heard in the distance, everybody gazed 
with longing and feverish expectation toward that window ; and if 
the guards marched past without the monarch showing himself, a 
deep depression, yes, a real dejection, took possession of the entire 
population of Berlin. But if the venerable, sympathetic, noble 
face, with its serious, beautiful blue eyes, was after a few days vis- 
ible again, then the multitude broke out in veritable storm ; hats 
were flung up, handkerchiefs waved, and such was the tumult of the 
shouting that you feared the bronze statue of the Emperor's great 
ancestor overhead might totter to its fall ! 

Close by the working-room is the bedchamber — unspeakably 
plain, and, considering all the circumstances, even insufficient^- fur- 
nished — where the simple, great Emperor died. From the small 
iron campaign-bed his body was carried to the Cathedral, there to 
be laid in state, and the coffin which enclosed the mortal remains of 
the dead followed the same road which the Emperor drove over al- 



Unier den Linden 



1S5 



most every clay of his life — in rain or sunshine, in his light open 
carriage, wrapped in his big gray cloak, by his side the adjutant on 
duty, and upon the box the coachman and groom, while the Emper- 
or returned in his grave, 

friendly way the respectful, 
affectionate greetings of his 
subjects. 

We cannot take a step 
in Unter den Linden with- 
out being forced to remind 
i mrselves that we are in the 
capital of a military State, 
of the State of the Hohen- 
zollems. The three streets 
that cross the Linden bear 
the names of Hohenzollern 
princes ; Wilhelm - Strasse, 
Friedrich-Strasse, Charlot- 
te • 1 1 -Strasse — the last named 
after Sophie Charlotte, the 
hrst queen of Prussia. On 
reaching the end of the 
street, and crossing the 
beautiful bridge that leads 
to the Scldossplatz, we shall 
see in the eight monumental 
groups that adorn its piers 
still another ocular demon- 
stration to the faithful citizen of Berlin and of the State, that the 
highest calling of the good Prussian is to fight, to conquer, and if 
need be to die, for the Fatherland. Our royal line sees in Unter 
den Linden an image of its whole existence, from " the first bath," 
as Goethe called baptism, to the coffin. 




SWANS IN AN ARM OF THE SPKEE. 



1S6 Unter den Linden 

If the strictly monarchical character of our State, its sense of 
power, its confidence in the force of its ruling dynasty and in the 
strength of its army, finds in Unter den Linden a most clear ex- 
pression, it is still true that if the great street illustrated merely the 
monarchical and military consciousness, it would give a one-sided 
picture of the city and the nation. 

In truth, however, the Linden is a Prussian microcosm. Home 
of its proudest and most beautiful buildings give one a timely re- 
minder that even with us the sabre is not always clanking ; that on 
the contrary, we strive earnestly to remove international difficulties, 
if possible, through the courteous channels of written explanation, 
and under the conciliatory conditions furnished by agreeable per- 
sonal intercourse ; that the prudent administrator of internal affairs 
has an important place by the side of the gallant warrior ; that pop- 
ular education is the basis of every healthy State ; that a high cul- 
ture alone can maintain a civilized nation at the summit of its 
power ; and that the service of the beautiful, the refreshment and 
elevation of the individual through works of art, is an indispensable 
factor of civilization ; while commerce must create the conditions for 
material prosperity. Crowded together, therefore, in the compara- 
tively brief space of this single street, we see the Foreign Embassies 
— indeed, as it happens, the representatives of the very nations 
whose present relation to our own leaves most to be desired, Riissia 
and France. It is a topographical realization, at least, of De- 
roulede's dream ! Here too w r e see the Ministries of the Interior, of 
Public Instruction and Culture, the Royal University, the Royal 
Library — with the inscription Nutrimentum Spiritus,so much mock- 
ed at for its venturesome Latinity — the Academy of Fine Arts, the 
Opera House, great banks, and the brilliant emporiums of luxury 
and fashion. 

For amusements also, and what people call amusements, there is 
plenty of provision in Unter den Linden. A huge private theatre is 
just now in process of erection, and is intended to surpass in beauty 



Unter den Linden 



1S7 






*.1 



all the existing play-houses of Berlin. Higher aims than this, to be 
sure, the new theatre — which is built by a Vienna speculator — will 
scarcely aspire to. It will content itself with allowing its patrons to 
take their pleasure comfortably in so-called specialties ; the break- 
neck feats of acrobats and gymnasts, the professional dexterities 
and generous displays of dancers, 
the rendition of folk-songs by 
scantily - arrayed singers, and 
other attractions of that sort. 

Upon the Linden, 
likewise, are those two 
places of entertainment 
visited by every stran- 
ger, but scarcely known 
to the Berliners. One 
is the Panopticum, with 
its wax reproductions 
of all the notabilities 
of this world — princes, 
heroes, statesmen, poets, 
artists, swindlers, robbers, mur- 
derers, and other personages who 
have gained a name in pleasant or unpleasant 
fashion. Then there is the Aquarium, which, it 
ought to be said, is most excellently equipped 
and carried on. Here also are to be found the last remnants of the 
pleasure places of Old Berlin. One of them is Habel's wine-rooms, 
the resort of Berliners of the genuine antique variety — officials, 
artists, and merchants — who still empty their glasses in the tiny 
rooms, eat from bare tables, and consider every stranger who acci- 
dentally wanders in as an unauthorized intruder. Another is Kranz- 
ler's far-famed Conditorei on the corner of Friedrich-Strasse, which 
is really the last of its type, and has gallantly resisted all the attacks 







A PILLAR FOR ADVERTISE- 
MENTS. 



1S8 



Unter den Linden 



gift 



of modernness. The proudest representative of the Vienna cafe, that 
new conqueror which has driven the old Conditorei from the fields, 
is the Cafe Bauer, just across the street, on the other side of Fried- 
rich-Strasse. On the Linden, too, are found the best and most 

prominent fashionable restaurants ; 
those of Dressel, Hiller, and Uhl being 
particularly well known. But for the 
lightening of more modest purses, as 
well, the Linden offers abundant op- 
portunity in a long line of hostelries, 
where one can get Bavarian and Pil- 
sener beer. Indeed, whoever knows 
this street thoroughly — fashionable 
-and can scent out 







though it be- 

what is concealed from view, finds 
there even at this day some hid- 
den cellars of the baser sort, 
whose bills of fare offer scarce- 
ly anything except ham, sau- 
sage, and sour cucumbers — 
particularly garlic - sausages, 
called Knobliinder — and where 
they sell thin native beer and a 
good deal of spirits. They are 
veritable Bums, yon will see — 
to use the characteristic word 
which the Berliners apply to 
this kind of public-house. Reputable droschke-drivers resort thith- 
er, and besides them, somewhat dubious characters — which is not 
saying, to be sure, that there are none of these latter in the more 
aristocratic establishments. I shall speak of that later. 

As a matter of course, the most interesting street in the city 
must endeavor to give a hospitable reception to the stranger who 



THE TOY-SHOP "WINDOW— A SUNDAY AFTERNOON 



U liter den Linden 189 

wishes to apprehend the peculiar quality of Berlin, that which is 
most individual and beautiful in it, as quickly and thoroughly as 
possible. The Linden hotels used to be by far the best of the city, 
and were the most popular. That is no longer so. The vast new 
hotels — the Kaiserhof, Central Hotel, Hotel Continental, Hotel Mo- 
nopol, Grand Hotel Alexanderplatz, have decentralized the patron- 
age of visitors. The most important hotels upon the Linden, the 
Hotel Royal, Hotel Petersburg, Hotel du Nord, Hotel de Rome, 
Victoria Hotel, and others, still enjoy a firmly established reputa- 
tion and a steady business, but they have not been able to keep pace 
with the development of the city, and the first-named hotels have 
taken the lead. However, two new ones are just building, the 
Minerva and the Bristol, which aim to meet the most fastidious de- 
mands of the most pampered modern. 

The typical character of the Linden is also clearly expressed in 
its architecture. It is the widest street of the capital. In the 
middle there is a broad, unpaved, but excellently cared for prome- 
nade, bounded upon one side by a riding-path, and upon the other 
by a stone-paved road, designed particularly for heavy vehicles 
that might interrupt traffic. Enclosing this central avenue and the 
two side ones are four rows of lindens, which have given the street 
its name. But you must not think of the huge, wonderful lindens 
of our Northern Germany. The old trees have suffered a great 
deal from time and the hostile influences of a great city, especially 
from the gas — always fatal to vegetation — and they are now a very 
shabby, mean, and melancholy sight. The electric light has here 
for some years dispossessed its rival, and gleams down from tall, 
beautifully-shaped posts, that are really ornamental. Parallel with 
the outermost rows of lindens there are two more roadways, asphalt 
on one side and excellently paved upon the other, and also a broad 
sidewalk on both sides ; so that the street has consequently seven 
divisions : two sidewalks, three roads for vehicles, a bridle-path, 
and a promenade. 



190 Unter den Linden 

The whole history of German, or, if I may use the expression, 
specifically Prussian architecture, passes before us when we walk 
along the Linden from the Castle to the Thiergarten. 

At the very beginning of the saunter we find ourselves at the 
Castle, face to face with a remnant of oldest Berlin, the beautiful 
fragments of the Hohenzollernburg upon the Spree. In the vast 
Castle itself, the powerful genius of Andreas Schliiter has given 
monumental expression — in a most finished form — to the idea of 
majesty, of royal strength, dignity, and grandeur ; and the same 
master's Arsenal, now known as the Hall of Fame, with its wonder- 
ful decorations of trophies and of masks of dying warriors, is un- 
questionably one of the most perfect specimens of architecture at 
the close of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. 

From the period of Frederick the Great we must give the first 
mention to the Opera House, by Knobelsdorff. The Opera House 
now before our eyes, was indeed built by the younger Langhans 
after the fire in 1845, but he followed KnobelsdorfFs old plan through- 
out. Ujdou the exterior, the building is certainly rather unimpres- 
sive and monotonous, but in its internal arrangements is very con- 
venient and beautiful. The Royal University is next worthy of 
notice; a finely proportioned structure, though barren looking. The 
fact was, the State had no money. Upon the court of the University, 
which opens toward the Linden, statues of the Humboldt brothers 
were erected not long ago. The two brother-savants are of course 
represented in a sitting posture, so as not to overtop the neighbor- 
ing generals ! As something indicative of the scanty means then at 
the disposal of the Prussian monarchy, as well as of the inefficient 
sentimentalism of the Romanticist upon the throne, Frederick 
William IV., we have yet to mention the pitiful Cathedral in the 
Lustgarten, with its bashful dome, together with the still uncom- 
pleted beginnings of the Campo Santo laid out around it — one of 
the dreams of the king. 



Unter den Linden 191 

The Brandenburg Gate, severely antique in style, masterful and 
imposing in effect, built by the elder Langhans in 1789-1793, is a 
unique creation in that period of architectural paltriness and degen- 
eracy. Above the entablature, which is supported by Doric col- 
umns, rises a superstructure in the Attic style, crowned by Victory 
standing in her four-horse car. Napoleon carried this Prussian 
Victory to Paris in 180(3, where it adorned for a while the Place du 
Carrousel in front of the Tuileries. We brought it back again in 
1814. 

"We find characteristic work of the genuinely Prussian architect, 
Carl Friedrich Schinkel — an antagonist of the prevailing degeneracy 
in style and an adherent of the classics — in two of his most impor- 
tant creations : the old Museum, with its imposing porch, and the 
Royal Guard-house, which is built like a Eoman fortified gate, and 
is provided, like the Museum, with a portico. The unpretending, 
but simple, beautiful, and finely executed Imperial Palace is by the 
younger Langhans. I said above that the majority of our least 
important Councillors of Commerce had at then- disposal more opu- 
lent dwellings than did our greatest Emperor ; and the explanation 
is simple. The Hohenzollerns have always been close calculators, 
ami Frederick William III., the Emperor's father, would grant un- 
der no circumstances more than 300,000 thalers — rather more than 
200,000 dollars — for the erection of the present Palace. 

The Linden has been almost entirely cleansed of that ugly utili- 
tarian architecture in vogue from the beginning to the middle of 
this century ; those monotonous barracks built in what people 
here call the "Privy Councillor's style." They have been cleared 
away with especial thoroughness in the last few years. And our 
latest style, which I admit may fairly be accused of almost every- 
thing — a somewhat too Eomantic coquetry with the German Re- 
naissance, with lions that stick their tongues out, turrets, balconies, 
and round, bulging little bottle-glass window-panes — has neverthe- 
less the undeniable excellence of handling its materials in a bolder, 




AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE PASSAGE. 



Unter den Linden 193 

fresher, freer, and more pleasing fashion than did the architects of 
a former generation, with their anxious, parsimonious economies. 
More than all, it works with more enduring and valuable material 
than was once used. It has erected splendid new buildings, with 
some questionable details, certainly, and yet always interesting ; 
of noble dignity, though insolent here and there ; and of decidedly 
imposing proportions, even if — as I think, fortunately — they have 
not reached the enormous, fabulous dimensions of the colossal 
American houses in New York and Chicago. 

The Linden bears most vivid testimony, therefore, both in the 
juxtaposition and medley of its architecture, to the evolution of our 
city from the very beginning up to the present time ; testimony to 
the taste which determined the different epochs of development ; 
and to the available opportunity for architectural culture offered by 
our city life. We meet at the outset the remarkable union of im- 
mutable confidence and royal power with the old poverty of means. 
Following that we see a growing prosperity, still accompanied 
always by the riding anxiety about expenditures ; and at last we re- 
joice in a cosmopolitan outlook and in a generous wealth. Yet even 
now, in the midst of all the luxury and magnificence of the new 
city, which never speaks more impressively to us than just here in 
this beautiful street, the horrid sandstone posts, with the rude iron 
rails, which enclose the middle promenade, and the mean wooden 
benches placed on the walk itself, remind lis of the frugal poverty 
and ugliness of the good old times. 

You cannot make a great street. The most cunningly premedi- 
tated architectural plans are of no avail ; nor is money, though it 
flow never so richly. With all that you can create the form but 
not the contents. We have only to think of Munich. The great 
street makes itself — " da se " — as said Victor Emmanuel of Italy. 

The majority of the significant events in the life of our city have 
taken place in the Linden ; events good and evil, ennobling and 



194 U nter den Linden 

humiliating, important and ridiculous. If anything happens any- 
where to set the popular waves in motion, they flow together in 
Unter den Linden. A complete catalogue of the things that have 
occurred here would grow into a history of Berlin and Prussia. 
These sketches, however, have no such end in view. I prefer to 
speak of a few events only, which abide in the memories of us all, 
and which rise visibly before our imaginations once more whenever 
we enter "Unter den Linden, their arena. 

There, in front of the Castle, on March 18, 1848, was fired that 
first, and even yet mysterious, shot which gave the signal for the 
revolution. In Unter den Linden, on the morning of the 19th, the 
aroused populace weltered against the Palace of the then Prince of 
Prussia, and 'with shrieks, howls, and yells threatened it with de- 
struction. ..For he, who was afterward the most loved and vene- 
rated of allemperors, was then the most hated man of his time. 
The work of demolition would very probably have been carried out, 
had it not been for the presence of mind of the National Guards- 
man on duty, who wrote upon the door in huge letters with a piece 
of chalk -';'\Watwnal-IJigenthum,." * The historic witticism stood 
for months upon the doorway of the present Imperial Palace. 

Upon "the corner of Friedrich-Strasse, ordinarily known as 
Kranzler's corner, were held those mass-meetings — in part so bur- 
lesque in character — where, in the spring of 1848, under the pretext 
of conferring about the popidar welfare, the good Linden-Midler, 
Held, Eichlef, and other friends of the people pronounced pompous 
orations, while the wildest kind of fun raged all around. Here arose 
those grotesque popular chimeras, the most unbelievable yarns 
about the "approach of the Russians," who had been summoned by 
the Prince of Prussia to encircle and starve out Berlin, in order to 
bring that dangerous nest of demagogues to reason and to restore 
the royal authoritj' ! Nowadays one puts his hands to his head and 
roars with laughter when he realizes what degree of political imma- 

* National property. 



U liter den Lin den 



195 



turity and childish knowledge of the world a faith in silly fables of 
that sort presupposes ; for this nonsense really found in its day a 
ready acceptance. Held, the man of the people, a gigantic figure 
with a finely-cut face — framed by a long, full beard — and a stento- 
rian voice, who was for 
some weeks the idol of the 
Berlin rabble, had hatched 
the ridiculous story. Of 
course there were plenty of 
reasonable folk who got 
huge merriment out of it, 
and while on Kranzler's 
corner the oratory was kin- 
dling into name the child- 
ish terror of the on-coming 
Cossacks — the tallow- 
candle - eaters who were 
going to smoke out the 
Berlin ei\s and outrage the 
women — the newsboys were at the 
same time crying extra editions with 
the witty head-lines : Berlin, verpro- 
viantire <lir, dein jrosser Held hat 
Hunger ! * 

Dear, dear ! It was really unnec- 
essary to summon the Cossacks of the Don in order to re-establish 
royal authority iu Berlin. On November 9, 1848, Field - marshal 
Wrangel with his troops of the Mark, who had temporarily aban- 
doned Berlin, made his entry through the Brandenburg Gate with- 
out encountering any resistance whatever. That they had felt 
prepared for it, however, even in military circles, is made clear by 
the universally familiar remark of Wrangel, who, just before the 

* Berlin, provision yourself, your great hero (Held !) is hungry ! 




THE LATEST NEWS. 



196 Unter den Linden 

troops entered, in speaking about his wife to a comrade, said— 
with his characteristic negligence of German grammar — "IcJi bin 
bios neugierig, ob sie ihr geherikt Jiaben ! " * Frau von Wrangel, it 
should be said, had remained in the palace of the commander-in- 
chief of the Mark, on the Pariser Platz. That ugly old dwelling 
also has been torn down since then, and upon its site appears a 
splendid great building, whose ground-floor is occupied by one of 
the most aristocratic clubs of Berlin, the Casino, frecpiented mainly 
by diplomats and officers. 

By the way, they had not hung the Field-marshal's wife. The 
participants and friends of the March revolution had decided upon 
passive resistance, and the troops, with Wrangel at their head, 
passed in perfect stillness through the Linden, which was abso- 
lutely deserted by humankind. No one was visible. All windows 
were closed. It was like a city of dead men. 

How different was the entry of the troops after the fortunate 
campaigns of 1864, 1866, and above all, 1871 ! The Linden was in 
holiday dress, and never was a triumphal street more lovely. Ar- 
chitecture, sculpture, and painting had united in the creation of a 
street picture of incomparable beauty. Huge stands were erected 
upon the squares, all the houses had gala decorations of flowers, 
banners, pennants, and flags, and across the whole breadth of the 
Linden great awnings were stretched, which our leading artists had 
adorned with paintings, some of them magnificent. Anton von 
Werner owes his reputation to his awning. The foremost sculp- 
tors, Begas, Siemering, Huntrieser, and others, fired with enthusi- 
asm, improvised wonderful statues representing war and victory. 
The " Germania," by Beinhold Begas, the famous frieze, by Sie- 
mering, were masterpieces that are not yet forgotten. 

Yet the most beautiful ornament, an ornament unique, never 
seen before that day, and perhaps never to be repeated in the his- 
tory of the world, was the trophies : the pile of cannon, steeple- 

* " I am only curious to know whether they have hung her ! " 



U liter den Linden 197 

high ; the four-fold lane of cannon, reaching from Koniggratzer 
Strasse to the Castle, so close together, wheel on wheel, that the 
axles touched ; thousands on thousands of cannon and mitrailleuses, 
all of them captured from the enemy ! And then the men, the 
hundreds of thousands flowing through the streets in dark waves 
touched with white, all sweeping toward the Linden ! The masses 
of humanity crowded together into an impenetrable wall ; many a 
ventm-esome fellow upon every tree ; every window occupied, in 
three or four tiers of heads ; every balcony fall as it woidd bear ; 
thousands in the new buildings, in break-neck positions ; thousands 
upon the roof-tops, clinging to the chimneys! And at the first 
trumpet peal from the oncoming victors, from every mouth a cry 
and a hurrah, a jubilation, a waving and beckoning, an enthusiasm 
so genuine, so fiery, so universal, so affecting, as can scarcely be 
equalled in all the annals of history ! And there they came, in the 
clearest, brightest sunshine ; Bismarck, Boon, and Moltke in front, 
then the Emperor, followed bj- the Crown Prince and Prince Fried- 
rich Karl, Crown Prince Albert, of Saxony, now the King, and all 
the princes and generals who had glorious part in the incomparable 
campaign. That was a day ! Whoever saw it will never forget it. 

Here, in Unter den Linden, the people have given a supreme 
revelation of their purest and highest activity, in the most genuine 
patriotic enthusiasm ; yet here, likewise, has raged atrocious base- 
ness and depravity, the insanity that seeks to strike down great 
men. On the southern side, right in front of the palace of the 
Russian Embassy, young Blind fired his murderous bullet at 
the hated Minister of State, von Bismarck. For the first time 
in the world, perhaps, the man whose assassination was attempted 
was the one to capture the assassin. Bismarck grasped Blind with 
his own hand and gave him up to the soldiers, who just then came 
marching by. Blind atoned for his crime by a self-inflicted death. 

Not far away, upon the same side of the street, the weak- 
minded, brutish journeyman-tinker Hodel, half -insane with politi- 



198 Unter den Linden 

cal delirium and in frenzied hatred of greatness, shot at the Em- 
peror. Since the beginning of his reign, the King and Emperor 
had not signed a death-warrant. Though a pardon was not in ac- 
cordance with the general desire, it might not have been out of the 
question, if a second and more serious attempt upon the life of the 
venerable monarch had not been made a short time afterward, and 
again in "Unter den Linden. From No. 18 — a building now torn 
down, in which was situated the well-known restaurant " Zu den 
drei Eaben " — Nobiling, who belonged to the educated class, fired 
both barrels of a shot-gun at the Emperor, as the latter was driving 
by in an open carnage. His aim was unfortunately so good that 
the aged sovereign fell back upon the cushion streaming with blood, 
and in the first consternation people had the terrible fear that 
the crime had been successful. The populace forced its way into 
the ill-omened house. The door was barred ; it was broken down. 
There was a brief struggle between the enraged crowd and the as- 
sassin, who, after mortally wounding one of his captors, directed 
the weapon against himself. Nobiling also died of his wounds. 

On that day the Linden presented a unique and dreadful pict- 
ure. The venerable Emperor, unconscious from the great loss of 
blood, and supported by his faithful groom, was driven slowly 
back to the Palace. In a few minutes the Linden was black. The 
rapidity with which the street fills, when something important hap- 
pens, is perfectly incomprehensible. No one knows where the peo- 
ple come from. Thousands upon thousands surrounded the Pal- 
ace and filled every avenue as far as the Pariserplatz. And the 
horror of it was, that from these close-packed masses there came 
no sound. It was a gloomy silence, like that of the coffin ; as 
though all felt the weight of the leaden cover. There was some- 
thing dreadful in it, and at the same time something infinitely 
touching. Alarm about the Emperor's fate had caught each man 
by the throat, and choked every sound. Such a unanimity of feel- 
ing and mood, in such a throng of tens of thousands of people, one 



Unter den Linden 199 

would have thought impossible. For weeks the Linden lay in deep 
mourning, and it would have been difficult to hnd anywhere such a 
great, splendid street giving a similar impression of cheerlessness, 
desolation, and distress. 

And melancholy, though in another fashion — not speechless with 
horror, but lamenting sorrowfully as if over the consummation of an 
unavoidable doom, was the Linden on that cold, snowy March day 
in 1888 — the Linden with its long streaming pennants 6f crape, the 
houses decked with black, the gas burning by day and the posts 
black-draped, the black catafalque with the branches of its. lofty 
palms all drooping, and with its dark laurel — as they Sore him out 
— the gray hero and statesman — while from the summit of the 
Brandenburg Gate there echoed with a mournful beauty the parting 
salutation of the Berliners to the most revered of all their sover- 
eigns : " Vale, Senex Imperator." 

The Linden chronicles in stone the history of Prussian kings 
and the Prussian people ; it also epitomizes in a peculiar way the 
daily activities of Berlin. It is significant that the beautiful broad 
street, so particularly adapted for saunterers, should on week-days 
have scarcely any life until the early hours of the afternoon. Berlin 
is then hard at work. We have in Berlin no counterpart of the bou- 
levardier of Paris. Those fashionable loungers — who hold serious 
conferences with their valets as to which shade of attire will appear 
to greater advantage in that day's sunlight; who grow absorbed in 
the selection of a proper cravat ; who, when they have, brushed their 
teeth and trimmed their nails in the morning, have about finished 
their day's work ; who earn not a penny and spend a great deal — 
those worthy, amiable eccentrics who give such a pleasant variety to 
the appearance of a street, are not found here at all. During busi- 
ness hours you will see in Unter den Linden really nobody except 
provincials, foreigners, and — of the city popidation — representatives 
of the wealthy classes only, particularly ladies who are shopping in 



200 



U nter den Linden 



the most expensive places. Upon the middle promenade there will 
be maids and nurses with children playing around them, and upon 
the benches, besides old pensioned officials, the more doubtful fig- 
ures of clerks out of work and pleasure -seekers. But all these come 




very far short of giv- 
ing life to the wide, 
fine street, and would 
in no way justify the 
excessive strength of 
the armed force 
whose duty it is to maintain order and to 
facilitate the movement of traffic. For one 
sees, every ten paces, the dark-blue uni- 
form of a policeman ; and in the middle of the crossings, sitting 
their horses firmly as bronze statues, the mounted police, the pride 
of the department. Really these fellows present a striking appear- 
ance. They have excellent horses, strong, sure-footed, and swift ; 
and they are all picked men, giants in fact, most of them with long, 
waviner full beards. 



ON THE BOUHSE. 



U liter den Linden 201 

Between tliree and four o'clock in the afternoon a decided move- 
ment toward the west is apparent, both upon the sidewalks and in 
the carriages. The Bourse has closed, and since the greater bankers 
and financiers, almost without exception, live in the western quarter 
of Berlin, particularly the Thiergarten, there is a natural current 
from the Burgstrasse, through the Liuden, toward the Brandenburg 
Gate. As the day advances, the Linden grows more animated, al- 
though under ordinary conditions it never affords anything compar- 
able to the variegated picture made by the street life of southern 
cities. The greater part of the Linden, from the entrance to the 
Kaiser-galerie — which rims through to the next parallel street to 
the south, Behren-Strasse, and is filled with attractive shops, a cafe, 
and various places of amusement — from the Kaiser-galerie to the 
Brandenburg Gate, and upon the opposite side as well, and also on 
the east from Charlotten-Strasse to the Castle on both sides, is per- 
fectly deserted in the later hours of the evening. But it grows all 
the noisier and livelier at the crossing of Friedrich-Strasse, espec- 
ially upon Kranzler's corner. Here, during the late evening and 
night, Berlin has in fact a thoroughly cosmopolitan character, and 
its evening holiday is longer than that of the other great European 
centres, Paris, London, and Vienna. 

At this famous corner there is something going on until four or 
five o'clock in the morning. It never ceases, really, and the gay 
ending of the night's frolic, and the gay beginning of the day's, 
touch hands. Stanch, conservative old Kranzler, who would have 
the best situated establishment in the city for the entertainment of 
nocturnal rovers from the so-called higher classes, stands fast by the 
respectable principles of the olden time, and shuts up his place 
punctually at twelve o'clock. It is otherwise with the resort across 
the way, the Cafe Bauer, whose architectural design and artistic 
decorations are of a magnificent character, and which has attained a 
fame that reaches far beyond the precincts of the city. 

The " cafe " is an importation from Vienna which established 



202 Unter den Linden 

itself among us some twenty years ago, and winch has completely 
driven out the old Berlin Conditorei. It is indeed difficult to say 
what it is that distinguishes the one from the other. In the Con- 
ditorei the principal articles of consumption were pastry and ices, 
which play a less important role in the cafe. But the ancient 
patrons of the Berlin Conditoreien visited them chiefly, after all, in 
order to drink their afternoon coffee there, and to read the news- 
papers. And that is really the chief purpose of the Vienna cafe 
also, only that the hours of patronage are not limited to a definite 
period ; that from the earliest hour in the morning to the corre- 
sponding hour of the next morning one is always sure of finding 
people there ; and that in addition to coffee and the other drink- 
ables served in the Conditorei, such as punch, spirits, and liqueurs 
of various kinds, one can also order beer. 

The old Conditoreien, even the most noted of them, such as the 
famous ones — now no more — kept by Stehely and Spargnapani, 
had, besides the shop with its tempting big pastry -table, only the 
most modest little quarters — two or three rooms of ordinary size — 
for the accommodation of their coffee-drinkers. They kept on file 
most of the Berlin papers, the more important provincial, and a 
couple of foreign ones. They had their regular circles of patrons, 
who gathered unfailingly at the appointed hour, chatted about the 
events of the day, read the newspapers, and played dominoes. 
Some of these circles were actually famous. The greatest mas- 
ters in art and science formed there a sort of club, of their own 
choice and with no regulations. It was very sociable and very 
simple. 

But now, early in the seventies, on the most crowded corner of 
the capital, opposite Kranzler's, a huge cafe was opened, able to ac- 
commodate on its first floor alone as many guests as could all the 
Conditoreien of Berlin together. It was built of the choicest mate- 
rials, and by artist hands. The walls were decorated with original 
paintings by the director of our Academy, Anton von Werner. In- 



Unter den Linden 203 

stead of the surly, leisurely service to which the patrons of the 
Conditorei had accustomed themselves, were the nimble Vienna 
waiters, with their excessive, sometimes even intrusive, promptness. 
Overseers and directors marched gravely through the rooms to see 
that the waiters did their duty, and that guests were shown comfort- 
able seats when they came in. Behind the tall counter sat attrac- 
tive young women, simply but tastefully dressed, who delivered to the 
waiters whatever the guests ordered to eat and drink, and who care- 
fully entered every particular in the big registers. In the upper 
story was the very best equipment for billiards, convenient card- 
tables, and a reading-room of such ample variety as had never been 
dreamed of. In fact, all the daily, weekly, and monthly periodicals 
of the old and new worlds were brought together there. The Cafe 
Bauer, in which one was better housed than was possible in any 
Conditorei, was better served, and coidd satisfy every desire more 
easily and at no greater expense, came at once into fashion. At 
first the Berliners were allured by curiosity to inspect what was to 
them a new species of public-house ; and then it became the cus- 
tomary resort of all those who had formerly frequented the Condi- 
toreien, and of the great number of strangers and new-comers to 
the city who could get amusement from the visit. 

The Cafe Bauer, therefore, is really always well filled, and in 
the afternoon, evening, and far into the night, it is even crowded. 
For a while there were permanent little circles formed here also, 
particularly of authors and artists, who desired, no doubt, to per- 
petuate the dear old customs of the moribund Conditorei ; but the 
noisy surroundings, the constant coming and going and moving 
about, the rattling of cups and sugar-bowls, the ceaseless striking of 
the call-bell upon the buffet — in a word, the clamorous activity of 
the place — was hostile to their design. It was not suited for having 
your talk out leisurely. The Cafe Bauer has throughout an air of 
restlessness ; it is a halting-place for passers-by, not a spot in which 
to settle down comfortably. It is only the latest night patrons who 



204 



Unter den Linden 



make an exception to this. They remain glued to the same chair, it 
is true, horn after hour. 

The guests of the Cafe Bauer are from all classes of society, so 

far as their outward 
J appearance does not 
give offence to sensi- 
tive people ; that is to 
say, they must be re- 
spectably dressed. 
More than this it 
would be scarcely 
reasonable to demand 
of them. The uni- 
formed Cerberus at 
the door, or else the 
black - coated purists 
who preside over the 
interior, sternly re- 
fuse entrance to peo- 
ple of the lower 
classes who are care- 
lessly dressed, or 
whose clothes are 
perhaps worn out in 
honorable toil, to 
noisy persons who in 
consequence of chink 
are in altogether too 
high spirits, and to women who wish to enter the place without es- 
cort. In addition to the numerous strangers, one finds representa- 
tives of the best Berlin society casually dropping in there. For a 
while our most fashionable women, in returning from the theatre or 
from a party, used to frisk into the Cafe Bauer and take a final 




NURSES FROM THE Sl'REEWALD. 



Unler den Linden 205 

" nightcap." But that did not last long and nowadays it is excep- 
tional. Nevertheless the most cautious, punctilious society-man 
can enter the cafe without fear at any hour of the day or evening. 
He may be entirely sure of finding his equals there — the higher 
officials, officers, well-known scientists and artists, leading mer- 
chants, and others of that class. 

Toward midnight the younger generation is in the predomi- 
nance. Students, young academicians, youthful civil servants, and 
clerks are sitting there at the round tables. But if one ever visits 
the cafe in company with an experienced criminal officer, his atten- 
tion will be called to this or that gentleman, quietly and even ele- 
gantly dressed, who figures as confidence-man, cheat, swindler, and 
worse, in the rogues' album. The strict regulation that ladies shall 
be admitted to the cafe only under masculine escort, does not, of 
course, prevent the fact that at night the majority of the feminine 
visitors — as a tolerably experienced eye can detect at a glance — be- 
long to exactly that class which it is the intention of the regulation 
to exclude. But they are unobtrusive in behavior, and are lost in 
the crowd. By far the greater part of visitors to the Cafe Bauer 
are perfectly harmless. They are just that sort of people who pass 
the day with a cup of coffee, the evening with Vienna beer, and the 
night around a punch-bowl ; who smoke, chat, and end their day as 
late as possible. For this cafe, it should be said, is open all the year 
round, and while the latest lingering guests are paying their reck- 
oning at dawn, and the earliest ones are already taking their seats 
for morning coffee, then, at the hour when the cafe is least patron- 
ized, come the scrubbing and dusting women, who sprinkle the floor, 
sweep out, brush away the dust, wipe off the tables, and remove the 
untidy traces of yesterday that they may set the establishment in 
order for a new day. 

Sylvester Evening is the only exception in the year. From ten 
o'clock in the evening of December 31st until two o'clock in the 
morning of January 1st, the cafe is closed by order of the police. 



206 U liter den Linden 

Everybody knows that the Berliners have the immemorial cus- 
tom of ending the old year and greeting the new in a most bois- 
terous fashion, which often degenerates into intolerable rudeness. 
Just as at every other popular demonstration the corner of Fried- 
rich-Strasse and the Linden served as a magnet to draw the crowd 
together from the remotest quarters of the city, here, in the mid- 
night hours of the last day of the year, there were the very wildest 
performances. Particularly prominent among the howling, surging 
masses here crowded upon one another were half -grown louts of the 
most disagreeable variety, who had added to the joys of Sylvester- 
tide a slight intoxication, and who found a peculiar pleasure in an- 
noying every decently dressed passer with jeers and abusive words 
— which served upon this occasion for wit — and sometimes with act- 
ual violence. Toward tall silk hats they had especial designs. For 
some incomprehensible reason, the harmless silk hat, universally 
worn by gentlemen of the wealthier classes, was all at once, upon 
Sylvester Evening, considered outlawed. No sooner did an unlucky 
man appear in a tall black hat, than a crowd of half -drunken vaga- 
bonds fell upon him, and with vigorous fists knocked it over his 
ears. While this rudeness was going on, there echoed from all 
sides a chorus of wishes for a Happy New Year ! 

Brawls came of it, and often bloody fights. The Sylvester nuis- 
ance lasted for decades before the police were able to root it out. 
It was increased, if possible, by savage Jew-baiting, and for some 
years the popular disorder had even a confessional character. The 
chief arena of this shocking license was just at Kranzler's corner, 
and also, as a matter of course, at the Cafe Bauer close by. There 
too it came to blows. The windows were smashed by stones, and all 
these scenes were thoroughly fitted, as one may see, to damage ma- 
terially the good name of the respectable coffee-house. Undoubt- 
edly, therefore, the police have met the wishes of the proprietor in 
ordering the cafe closed, in recent years, upon Sylvester Evening. 

The civil authorities have shown great energy of late in posting 



Unter den Linden 207 

an extraordinary number of officers upon the dangerous Friedrich- 
Strasse corner during that uproarious night. They have made vari- 
ous arrests, followed by the intliction of penalties, and as a conse- 
quence the Sylvester riot is practically suppressed. Nowadays, as 
the bells sound the first stroke of midnight, one hears nothing more 
tkan loud cries of "Prosit Neujahr!" and otker harmless greet- 
ings which trouble nobody. 

It is not muck to our credit to be obliged to confess that these 
brutalities upon Sylvester Evening really represent the last popular 
festival of the Berliners. But even those who are in other respects 
jealous of police interference do not regret that the strong arm of 
the law put an cud to it. 

Upon ordinary days, too, it cannot be denied tkat the police 
have taken from tke nocturnal street scenes upon tke Linden muck 
that was characteristic. " Berlin by night," with all its peculiar 
excesses, was formerly more recognizable in Unter den Linden than 
anywhere else. Kalisch sang in his farce, written as late as 1849 : 

" Sehl Ihr dart Tinier den Linden 
Griselle and Commis? 
Sie wisSen sich zufinden, 
Und leise fliistert sie : 
' Zu Hause will ich schreilen? 
Der Jungling fliistert sachl : 
' Ach, durft ich Sie begleilen ? ' 
Das ist Berlin tei Nacht ! " 

The word " Grisette," which Kalisch uses here, is only a dis- 
creet circumlocution for a less poetical species of the sex, which one 
used to meet by the hundred upon Unter den Linden and Fried- 
rich-Strasse. These women are forbidden absolutely to enter tkose 
two streets, and tke otker main thoroughfares, and our police, con- 
cerning whose failure to apprehend the most dangerous criminals a 
good many uncomplimentary things have been said very lately, 
have been thoroughly successful in maintaining decency upon the 



208 Unter den Linden 

streets — particularly upon Unter den Linden. The light-footed 
game has been scared ofl', and with it the hunters. This explains 
the quiet and sobriety of the beautiful street during the hours of 
the night. 

A single noisy exception is the Friedrich-Strasse crossing. 
There, indeed, is a combination of all the types that characterize 
Berlin life. There are the fat news-women ; there is the legless 
cripple who offers wax tapers for sale — and by the way, in spite of 
his terrible mutilation, he is one of the strongest men I have ever 
seen in my life, a veritable giant when roused. There the most 
delicate flowers are sold by boys and girls who are already old in 
crime. Particularly well known among these is the tall lank rascal, 
who calls out in his hoarse voice to every passer, following him a 
couple of steps : ' Herr Baron, Koofen Se mir dock Veilchen ab ! 
Bitte, Herr Jraf ! Durchlauchfiigster Fiirst I Fur Hire Frau 
MajeMatin ! " * 

And if even this rapid elevation in rank does not allure the pur- 
chaser, he turns away with a muttered " Rv/ppsack ! " t or some 
other amiable exj)ression. The noble youth comes, for that matter, 
from a good family ; he is the son of the Widow Quinche, who was 
executed for killing Professor Gregy ; being a small boy at the 
time, he was sent out of the house to fetch liquor, while his mother 
was committing the murder. These boy and girl flower-sellers ex- 
hibit in most shameless fashion one of the least pleasant traits of 
the Berliners, the so-called Unverfrorenheit. :|: 

There too are the itinerant peddlers ; the white-aproned venders 
of pastry and sausages. The pastry-man, whose basket contains 
fritters, Berlin pancakes, and other local specialties of doubtful 
quality, goes popularly by the name of " Kranzler" — after the pro- 
prietor of the famous Conditorei ; while his colleague with the 

* "Baron, won't you buy my violets ! Please, Count! Most Serene Highness! 
Buy them for Her Majesty, your wife ! " 

f li Ragamuffin." J Brass. 



Unter den Linden 209 

brightly polished brass chafing-dish, beneath which the bluish flame 

of alcohol keeps hot those sausages concerning whose origin and 

composition the _^ 

wise man does not 

reflect, is called, 

by a like analogy, 

"Niquet"— after 

the best-known 

sausage firm of 

Berlin. And there 

one sees, finally, in 

little groups of two 

or three, upon the 

corner of Fried- 

rich-Strasse and 

upon the promen- 
ade, those utterly 
despicable charac- 
ters : young fellows 
from twenty to 
twenty - five years 
old, afraid of work, 
coquettishly fresh 
from the barber, 
with cravats i n 
striking colors and 
big scarf-pins, their 
hands covered with 
real and imitation 
jewels; those extravagant caricatures of the prevailing fashion, of 
the most disgusting kind, who owe. their existence and their ele- 
gance to the friendship of those feminine personages who have now 
been swept out of the Linden-to infamy doubled by idleness. 




HOT SAUSAGES ! 



210 



Unter den Linden 



Unter den Linden, therefore, in its monumental public struct- 
ures and private buildings, in its design and execution, its greatness 
and wretchedness, magnificence and depravity ; in its history and 
architecture, and in its reality and symbolism, is the most faithful, 
the most complete image of the Prussian capital, characteristic in 
everything, and perhaps more significant and comprehensive in its 
many-sidedness than is the great street of any other metropolis. 




THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT 
By Isabel F. Hapgood 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS BY ILYA EFIMOV1TCH REPIN 



THE NEVSKY PROSPEKT 



THE Nevsky Prospekt ! From the time when, as children, we 
first encounter the words, in geographical compilations dis- 
guised as books of travel, what visions do they not summon 
up ! Yisii >ns of the realm of the Frost King and of his Regent, the 
White Tzar, as fantastic as any of those narrated of tropic climes 
by Schehrrezade. and with which we are far more familiar than we 
are with the history of our native land. 

When we attain to the reality of our visions, in point of locality 
at least, we find a definite starting-point ready to our hand, where 
veracious legend and more veracious history are satisfactorily 
blended. It is at the eastern extremity of the famous broad avenue 
— which is the meaning of Prospekt. Here, on the bank of the 
Neva, tradition alleges that Alexander, Prince of Novgorod, won 
his great battle — and, incidentally, his surname of Nevsky, and his 
post of patron saint of Russia — over the united forces of the Swedes 
and oppressive Knights of the Teutonic Order, in the year 1240. 

Nearly five hundred years later the spot was occupied by Rhiti- 
owa, one of the forty Finnish villages scattered over the present 
site of St. Petersburg, as designated by the maps of the Swedes, 
whom Peter the Great — practically Russia's second patron saint — 
expelled anew when he captured their thriving commercial town, on 
the shore of the Neva, directly opposite, now known as Malaya 



214 The Nevsky Prospekt 

Okhta, possessed of extensive foreign trade, and of a church older 
than the capital, which recently celebrated its two-hundredth anni- 
versary. 

It was in 1710 that Peter I. named the place " Victory," in 
honor of Prince -Saint Alexander Nevsky's conquest, and com- 
manded the erection of a Lavra, or first class monastery, the seat of 
a Metrojoolitan, and of a theological seminary. By 171(3 the mon- 
astery was completed, in wood, as engravings of that day show us, 
but in a very different form from the complex of stone buildings of 
the present day. Its principal facade, with extensive, stiffly ar- 
ranged gardens, faced upon the river, the only means of communi- 
cation in that town — planted on a bog, threaded with marshy 
streams — being by boat. In fact, for a long time horses were so 
scarce in the infant capital, where reindeer were used in sledges 
even as late as the end of the last century, that no one was per- 
mitted to come to Court, during Peter the Great's reign, otherwise 
than by water. Necessity and the enforced cultivation of aquatic 
habits in his inland subjects, which the enterprising Emperor had 
so much at heart, combined to counsel this regulation. 

The bones of Prince Alexander were brought to Petersburg, 
from their resting-place in the Vladimir Government, in 1724, Peter 
the Great occupying his favorite post, as pilot and steersman in the 
Saint's state barge, and they now repose in the monastery cathedral, 
under a canopy, and in a tomb of silver, 3,600 pounds in weight, 
given by Peter's daughter, the devout Empress Elizabeth. In the 
cemetery surrounding the cathedral, under the fragrant firs and 
birches, with the blue Neva rippling far below, lie many of the men 
who have contributed to the advancement of their country in litera- 
ture, art, and science, during the last two centuries. 

Of all the historical memories connected with this monastery 
none is more curious than that relating to the second funeral of 
Peter III. He had been buried by his wife, in 1762, with much 
simplicity, in one of the many churches of the Lavra, which con- 



The Nevsky Prospekt 215 

tains the family tombs and monuments not only of members of the 
Imperial family, but of the noble families most illustrious in the 
eighteenth century. "When Paul I. came to the throne, in 1796, his 
hist care was to give his long-deceased father a more fitting burial. 
The body was exhumed. Surrounded by his court, Pavel Petrovitch 
took the Imperial crown from the altar, placed it on his own head, 
then laid it reverently on his father's coffin. When Peter III. was 
transferred immediately afterward, with magnificent ceremonial, to 
the Winter Palace, there to lie in state by the side of his wife, 
Katherine II., and to accompany her to his proper resting-place 
among the sovereigns of Russia, iu the cathedral of the Peter-Paid 
fortress, Count Alexei Grigoreviteh Orlotf was appointed, with tine 
irony, to carry the crown before his former master, whom he had 
betrayed, and in the necessity for whose first funeral he had played 
the part of Fate. It was with considerable difficulty that he was 
hunted up, while Emperor and pageant waited, in the obscure 
comer where he was sobbing and weeping ; and with still greater 
difficulty was he finally persuaded to perform the task assigned to 
him in the procession. 

Outside the vast monastery, which, like most Russian monaster- 
ies, resembles a fortress, though, unlike most of them, it has never 
served as such, the scene is almost rural. Pigeons, those symbols 
of the Holy Ghost, inviolable in Russia, attack with impunity the 
grain-bags in the acres of storehouses opposite, pick holes, and eat 
their fill undisturbed. 

From this spot to the slight curve in the Prospekt, at the 
Znamenskaya Square, a distance of about a mile, where the Mos- 
cow Railway Station is situated, and where the train of steam tram- 
cars is superseded by less terrifying horse-cars, the whole aspect of 
the avenue is that of a provincial town, in the character of the peo- 
ple and the buildings, even to the favorite crushed-strawberry and 
azure washes, and green iron roofs on the countrified shops. Here 
and there, not very far away, a log-house may even be espied. 



216 The Nevsky Prospekt 

During the next three-quarters of a mile the houses and shops 
are more city-like, and, being newer than those beyond, are more 
ornamented as to the stucco of their windows and doors. Here, 
as elsewhere in this stoneless land, with rare exceptions, the build- 
ings are of brick or rubble, stuccoed and washed, generally in light 
yellow, with walls three feet or more apart, warmly filled in, and 
ventilated through the hermetically sealed windows by ample 
panes in the centre of the sashes, or by apertures in the string- 
courses between stories, which open into each room. Shops below, 
apartments above, this is the nearly invariable ride. 

It is only when we reach the Anitchkoff Bridge, with its grace- 
ful railing of sea-horses, adorned with four colossal bronze groups 
of horse-tamers, from the hand of the Russian sculptor, Baron 
Klodt, that the really characteristic part of the Nevsky begins. 

It is difficult to believe that fifty years ago this spot was the 
end of the Petersburg world. But at that epoch the Nevsky was 
decorated with rows of fine large trees, which have now disap- 
peared to the last twig. The Fontanka Biver, or canal, over which 
we stand, offers the best of the many illustrations of the manner in 
which Peter the Great, with his ardent love of water and Dutch 
ways, and his worthy successors, have turned natural disadvan- 
tages into advantages and objects of beauty. The Fontanka was the 
largest of the numerous marshy rivers in that Arctic bog selected 
by Peter I. for his new capital, which have been deepened, widened, 
faced with cut granite walls, and utilized as means of cheap com- 
munication between distant parts of the city, and as relief channels 
for the inundating waves of the Gulf of Finland, which rise, more 
or less, every year, from August to November, at the behest of the 
southwest gale. That this last precaution is not superfluous is 
shown by the iron flood-mark set into the wall of the Anitchkoff 
Palace, on the southern shore of the Fontanka, as on so many 
other public buildings in the city, with "1824" appended — the 
date of one celebrated and disastrous inundation which attained in 






The Nevsky Prospekt 217 

some places the height of thirteen feet and seven inches. This par- 
ticular river derived its name from the fact that it was trained to 
carry water and feed the fountains in Peter the Great's favorite 
Summer Garden, of which only one now remains. 

At the close of the last century, and even later, persons out of 
favor at Court, or nobles who had committed misdemeanors, were 
banished to the southern shores of the Fontanka, as to a foreign 
land. Among the amusements at the dachas — the wooden country 
houses — in the wilder recesses of the vast parks which studded both 
shores, the chase after wild animals, and from bandits, played a 
prominent part. 

The stretch which we have traversed on our way from the mon- 
astery, and which is punctuated at the corner of the canal and the 
Prospekt by the pleasing brick and granite palace of the Emperor's 
brother, Grand Duke Sergiei Alexandrovitch, which formerly be- 
longed to Prince Byeloselsky-Byelozersky, was the suburb belong- 
ing to Lieutenant-Colonel Anitchkoff, who built the first bridge, of 
wood, in 1715. As late as the reign of Alexander I. all persons en- 
tering the town were required to inscribe their names in the regis- 
ter kept at the barrier placed at this bridge. Some roguish fellows 
having conspired to cast ridicule on this custom, by writing absurd 
names, the guards were instructed to make an example of the next 
jester whose name should strike them as suspicious. Fate willed 
that the Imperial Comptroller, Baltazar Baltazarovitch Kampen- 
hausen, with his Russianized German name, should fall a victim to 
this order, and he was detained until his fantastic cognomen, so 
harsh to Slavic ears, could be investigated. 

By day or by night, in winter or summer, it is a pure delight to 
stand on the Anitchkoff Bridge and survey the scene on either 
hand. If we gaze to the north toward what is one of the oldest 
parts settled on the rivulet-riddled, so-called " mainland," in this 
Northern Venice, we see the long, plain facade of the Katherine 
Institute for the education of the daughters of officers, originally 






218 The Nevsky Prospekt 

built by Peter the Great for bis daughter Anna, as the " Italian 
Palace," but used only for the palace servants, until it was built 
over and converted to its present purpose. Beyond, we catch a 
glimpse of the yellow wings of Count Scheremetieff's ancient house 
and its great iron railing, behind which, in a spacious court-yard, 
after the Moscow fashion so rare in thrifty Petersburg, the main 
building lies invisible to us. If we look to the south, we find the 
long ochre mass of the Anitchkoff Palace, facing on the Nevsky, 
upon the right shore ; on the left, beyond the palace of Sergiei 
Alexandrovitch, the branch of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, in 
old Russian style, with highly colored saints and heads of seraphim 
on the outer walls ; and a perspective of light, stuccoed building — 
dwellings, markets, churches — until the eye halts with pleasure on 
the distant blue dome of the Troitzky cathedral, studded with 
golden stars. Indeed it is difficult to discover a vista in St. Pe- 
tersburg which does not charm us with a glimpse of one or more 
of these cross-crowned domes, floating, bubble-like, in the pale 
azure of the sky. Though they are far from being as beautiful in 
form or coloring as those of Moscow, they satisfy us at the moment. 

If it is on a winter night that we take up our stand here, we may 
catch a distant glimpse of the numerous " skating gardens," laid out 
upon the ice cleared on the snowy surface of the canal. The ice-hills 
will be black with forms flitting swiftly down the shining roads on 
sledges or skates, illuminated by the electric light ; a band will be 
braying blithely, regardless of the piercing cold, and the skaters 
will dance on, in their fancy-dress ball or prize races, or otherwise, 
clad so thinly as to amaze the shivering foreigner as he hugs his 
furs. 

By day the teamsters stand upon the quay, with rough aprons 
over their ballet-skirted sheepskin coats, waiting for a job. If we 
hire one of them, we shall find that they all belong to the ancient 
Russian Artel, or Labor Union, which prevents competition beyond 
a certain point. When the price has been fixed, after due and in- 



The Nevsky Prospekt 



219 



evitable chaffering, one lomovoi grasps his shapeless cap by its worn 
edge of fur, bites a kopek, and drops it in. Each of the other men 
contributes a marked copper likewise, and we are invited to draw 
lots, in full view, to determine which of them shall have the job. 
The master of the Artel sees to it that there is fair play on both 
sides. If an unruly member presumes to intervene with a lower 




TEAMSTERS ON THE QUAY. 



bid, with the object of monopobzing the job out of turn, he is 
promptly squelched, and, though his bid may be allowed to stand, 
the man whose kopek we have drawn must do the work. The 
winner chee-ee-eeps to his little horse, whose shaggy mane has 
been tangled by the loving hands of the domovoi (house-sprite) and 
hangs to his knees. The patient beast, which, like all Russian 
horses, is never covered, no matter how severe the weather may be, 
or how hot he may be from exercise, rouses himself from his real 



220 



The Nevsky Prospekt 



or simulated slumber, and takes up the burden of life again, han- 
dicapped by the huge wooden arch, gayly painted in flowers and 
initials, which joins his shafts, and does stout service despite his 
sorry aspect. 

But the early summer is the season when the Fontanka is to be 




A FISH-^HOP. 



seen in its most characteristic state. The brilliant blue water 
sparkles under the hot sun, or adds one more tint to the exquisite 
hues which make of the sky one vast, gleaming fire-opal on those 
marvellous " white nights " when darkness never descends to a 
depth beyond the point where it leaves all objects with natural 
forms and colors, and only spiritualizes them with the geutle vague- 
ness of a translucent veil. Small steamers, manned by wooden-faced, 
blond Finns, connect the unfashionable suburban quarter, lying near 



The Nevsky Prospekt 221 

the canal's entrance into the Neva on the west, with the fashionable 
Court quarter on the northern qrrays at its other entrance into the 
Neva, seven versts away. They dart about like sea-gulls, picking 
their path, not unfraught with serious clanger, among the obstruc- 
tions. The obstructions are many : Washing-house boats (it is a 
good old unexploded theory in Petersburg that clothes are clean 
only when rinsed in running water, even though our eyes and noses 
inform us, unaided by chart, where the drainage goes) ; little flo- 
tillas of dingy flat-boats, anchored around the " Fish-Gardens," and 
containing the latter's stock in trade, where persons of taste pick 
their second dinner-course out of the flopping inmates of a tempo- 
rary scoop-net ; huge, unwieldy wood barks, put together with 
wooden pegs, and steered with long, clumsy rudders, which the 
poor peasants have painfully poled — tramp, tramp, tramp, along the 
sides — through four hundred miles of tortuous waterways from that 
province of the former haughty republic, " Lord Novgorod the 
Great," where Prince Kiirik ruled and laid the foundations of the 
present Imperial Empire, and whence came Prince-Saint Alexander 
to win his surname of Nevsky, as we have seen, at the spot where 
his monastery stands, a couple of miles, at most, away. 

The boatmen, who have trundled all day long their quaint little 
barrows over the narrow iron rails into the spacious inner court- 
yards of the houses on the qua)', and have piled up their wood for 
winter fuel, or loaded it into the carts for less accessible buildings, 
now sit on the stern of their barks, over their coarse food — sour 
black bread, boiled buckwheat groats, and salted cucumbers — dof- 
fing their hats and crossing themselves reverently before and after 
their simple meal, and chatting until the red glow of sunset in the 
north flickers up to the zenith in waves of sea-green, lilac, and 
amber, and descends again in the north, at the pearl-pink of dawn. 
Sleep is a lost art with these men, as with all classes of people, dur- 
ing those nerve-destroying " white nights." When all the silvery 
satin of the birch logs has been removed from their capacious holds, 



222 The Nevsky Prospekt 

these primitive barks will be unpegged, and the cheap " bark- 
wood," riddled with holes as by a mitrailleuse, will be used for poor 
structures on the outskirts of the town. 

On the upper shore of this river, second only to the Neva 
in its perennial fascination, and facing on the Prospekt, stands the 
Anitchkoff Palace, on the site of a former lumber-yard, which was 
purchased by the Empress Elizabeth, when she commissioned her 
favorite architect, Rastrelli, to erect for Count Razumovsky a palace 
in that rococo style which he used in so many palaces and churches 
during her reign and that of Katherine II. — the rococo style being, 
by the way, quite the most unsuited discoverable for Russian 
churches. 

Count Alexei Grigorevitck Razumovsky was the Empress Eliza- 
beth's husband, the uneducated but handsome son of a plain Kazak 
from Little Russia, who attracted the attention of Elizaveta Pe- 
trovna as his sweet voice rang out in the Imperial choir, at mass, in 
her palace church. When the palace was completed, in 1757, it did 
not differ materially from its present appearance, as a painting in 
the Winter Palace shows, except that its colonnade, now inclosed 
for the Imperial Chancellery and offices, then abutted directly on 
the Eontanka. It has had a very varied ownership, with some 
curious features in that connection which remind one of a gigantic 
game of ball between Katherine II. and Prince Potemkin. Count 
Razumovsky did not live in it until after the Empress Elizabeth's 
death, in 1762. After his own death his brother sold it to the state, 
and Katherine II. presented it to Prince Potemkin, who promptly 
resold it to a wealthy merchant-contractor in the commissariat de- 
partment of the army, who in turn sold it to Katherine II., who 
gave it once more to Potemkin. The Prince never lived here, but 
gave sumptuous garden parties in the vast park, which is now in 
great part built over, and sold it back to the state again in 1794. It 
was first occupied by royalty in 1809, when the Emperor Alexander 
I. settled his sister here, with her first husband (that Prince of 



The hlevsky Prospekt 223 

Oldenburg whose territory in Germany Napoleon I. so summarily 
annexed a few years later), thereby converting the Oldenburgs per- 
manently into Russian princes. 

The Grand Duke Heir Nicholas used it from 1819 until he 
ascended the throne in 1825, and since that time it has been con- 
sidered the palace of the heir to the throne. But the present 
Enrperor has continued to occupy it since his accession, preferring 
its simplicity to the magnificence of the Winter Palace. 

The high walls, of that reddish -yellow hue, like the palace itself, 
which is usually devoted to government buildings in Russia, con- 
tinue the line of offices along the Prospekt, and surround wooded 
gardens, where the Emperor and his family coast, skate, and enjoy 
their winter pleasures, invisible to the eyes of passers-by. 

These woods and walls also form the eastern boundary of the 
Alexandra Square, in whose centre rises Mikeshin and Opekiiskin's 
fine colossal bronze statue of Katherine II., crowned, sceptred, in 
Imperial robes, and with the men who made her reign illustrious 
grouped about her feet. Among these representatives of the Army, 
Navy, Literature, Science, Ait, there is one woman — that dashing 
Princess Elizaveta Koinauovna Dashkoff, who helped Katherine to 
her throne. As Empress, Katherine appointed her to be first presi- 
dent of the newly founded Academy of Sciences, but afterward 
withdrew her favor, and condemned her to both polite and impolite 
exile, because of her very services, the Princess hints, in her cele- 
brated and very lively " Memoirs." 

In the Alexandra Theatre, for Russian and German drama, 
which rears its new (1828) Corinthian peristyle and its bronze quad- 
riga behind the great Empress, forming the background of the 
Square, two of the Empress's dramas still hold the stage, on occa- 
sion. For this busy and energetic woman not only edited and pub- 
lished a newspaper, the greater part of which she wrote with her 
own hand, but composed numerous comedies and comic operas, 
where the moral, though sufficiently obvious all the way through, 



224 



The Nevsky Prospekt 




THE CORNER OF THE CENTRAL HALL IN THE GOSTINNY DVOR. 

one would have thought, in the good old style, is neatly labelled at 
the end. These were acted first in the private theatres of the vari- 
ous palaces, by the dames and cavaliers of the Court, after which 



The Nevsky Prospekt 225 

professional actors presented them to the public in the ordinary 
theatres. 

It is in vain that we scrutinize the chubby-cheeked countenance 
of the bronze Prince Poternkin, at Katherine II. s feet, to discover 
the secret of the charm which made the Imperial lady who towers 
above him force upon him so often the ground upon which thev 
both now stand. He stares stolidly at the Prospekt, ignoring not 
only the Theatre, but the vast structures containing the Direction of 
1 Theatres and Prisons, the Censor's Office, Theatrical School, and 
other government offices in the background ; the new building for 
shops and apartments, where ancient Russian forms have been 
adapted to modern street purposes ; and even the wonderfully rich 
Imperial Public Library, begun in 1794, to contain the books 
brought from Warsaw, with its Corinthian peristyle interspersed 
with bronze statues of ancient sages, on the garden side — all of 
which stand upon the scene of his former garden parties, as the 
name of the avenue beyond the plain end of the Library on the 
Prospekt — Great Garden Street — reminds us. Not far away is the 
site of the tunnel dug under the Prospekt 1 >v the revolutionists, which, 
however, was fortunately discovered in time to prevent the destruc- 
tion of one of the fairest parts of the city, and its most valuable 
buildings. With the next block we enter upon the liveliest, the 
most characteristic portion of the Nevsky Prospekt, in that scant 
fraction over a mile, which is left to us above the AnitckkofY Bridge. 
Here stands the vast bazaar known as the Gostinny Dvor — 
" Guests' Court " — a name which dates from the epoch when a 
wealthy merchant engaged in foreign trade, and owning his own 
ships, was distinguished from the lesser sort by the title of " Guest," 
which we find in the ancient epic songs of Russia. Its frontage of 
seven hundred feet on the Prospekt, and one thousand and fifty on 
Great Garden and the next parallel street, prepare us to believe 
that it may really contain more than five hundred shops in the two 
stories, the lower surrounded by a vaulted arcade supporting an 



226 The Nevsky Prospekt 

open gallery, which is invaluable for decorative purposes at Easter 
and on Imperial festival days. Erected in 1735, very much in its 
present shape, the one common throughout the country, on what 
had been an iinpassable morass a short time before, and where the 
ground still quakes at dawn, it may not contain the largest and best 
shops in town, and its merchants certainly are not "Guests " in the 
ancient acceptation of the word ; but we may claim, nevertheless, 
that it presents a compendium of most purchasable articles extant, 
from samovars, furs, and military goods, to books, sacred images, and 
Moscow imitations of Parisian novelties at remarkably low prices, 
as well as the originals. 

The nooks and spaces of the arcade, especially at the corners 
and centre, are occupied by booths of cheap wares. The sacred im- 
age, indispensable to a Russian shop, is painted on the vaulted 
ceiling ; the shrine lamp flickers in the open air, thus serving many 
aproned, homespun- and sheepskin-clad dealers. The throng of 
promenaders here is always varied and interesting. The practised 
eye distinguishes infinite shades of difference in wealth, social 
standing, and other conditions. The lady in the velvet shuba, lined 
with sable or black fox, her soft velvet cap edged with costly otter, 
her head wrapped in a fleecy knitted shawl of goat's down from the 
steppes of Orenburg, or pointed hood — the baslilylc — of woven goafs- 
down from the Caucasus, has driven hither in her sledge or carriage, 
and has alighted to gratify the curiosity of her sons. We know at a 
glance whether the lads belong in the aristocratic Pages' Corps on 
Great Garden Street, hard by, in the University, the Law School, 
the Lyceum, or the Gymnasium, and we can make a shrewd guess at 
their future professions by their faces as well as by their uniforms. 
The lady who comes to meet us in sleeved pelisse, wadded with 
eiderdown, and the one in a short jacket, have arrived, and must re- 
turn, on foot ; they could not drive far in the open air, so thinly clad. 

At Christmas-tide there is a great augmentation in the queer 
'•' Vyazemsky " and other cakes, the peasant laces, sweet Vyborg 



The Nevsky Prospekt 



227 



cracknels, fruit pastils, and other popular goods, on which these 
petty, open-air dealers appear to thrive, both in health and purse. 
The spacious area between the bazaar and the sidewalk of the Nev- 




(~|, \ e.^ 



BUYING CHRISTMAS-THEES. 



sky is rilled with Christmas-trees, beautifully unadorned, or ruined 
with misplaced gaudiness, brought in, in the majority of cases, by 
Finns from the surrounding country. Again, in the week preceding 
Palm Sunday, Verbnaya Ydrmarlca, or Pussy Willow Fair, takes 



228 The Nivsky Prospekt 

place here. Nominally it is held for the purpose of providing the 
public with twigs of that aesthetic plant (the only one which shows a 
vestige of life at that season), which are used as palms, from the 
Emperor's palace to the poorest church in the land. In reality it is 
a most amusing fair for toys and cheap goods suitable for Easter, 
eggs, gay paper roses wherewith to adorn the Easter cake, and 
that combination of sour and sweet cream and other forbidden del- 
icacies, the pdskJia, with which the long, severe fast is to be broken, 
after midnight matins on Easter. Here are plump little red Finland 
parrots, green and red finches, and other song-birds, which kindly 
people buy and set free, after a pretty custom. The board and can- 
vas booths, the sites for which are drawn by lot by soldiers' widows, 
and sold or used as suits their convenience, are locked at night by 
dropping the canvas flap, and are never guarded ; while the hint 
that thefts may be committed, or that watching is necessary, is re- 
pelled with indignation by the stall-keepers. 

There is always a popular toy of the hour. One year it consisted 
of highly colored, beautifully made bottle-imps, which were loudly 
cried as Amerilednskiya zhiteli — inhabitants of America. We in- 
quired the reason for their name. 

" They are made in the exact image of the Americans," explained 
the peasant vendor, offering a pale blue imp, with a long, red tongue 
and a phenomenal tail, for our admiration. 

" We are inhabitants of America. Is the likeness very strong '? " 
we asked. 

The crowd tittered softly ; the man looked frightened ; but, find- 
ing that no dire fate threatened, he was soon vociferating again, with 
a roguish grin : 

" Kupiti, kupi-i-iti ! PrevosJcJwdniya Amerihanshiya zhiteli ! 
Sd-d-miya nastoydshtschiya ! " " Buy, buy, splendid natives of 
America ! the most genuine sort ! " 

Ear behind this Gostinny Dvor extends a complex mass of other 
curious " courts" and markets, all worthy of a visit for the popular 



The Nevsky Prospekt 



229 



types which they afford of the lower classes. Among them all none 
is more steadily and diversely interesting, at all seasons of the year, 
than the Syenndya Pldshtschad — the Haymarket — so called from its 
use in days long gone by. Here, in the Fish Market, is the great 
repository for the frozen food which is so necessary in a land where 
the Church exacts a sum total of over f our months' fasting out of 
the twelve. Here the fish lie piled like cordwood, or overflow from 




AHKUANGKL FINUKKMKN AT Till: MAKKKT. 



casks, for economical buyers. Merchants' wives, with heads envel- 
oped in colored kerchiefs, in the olden style, well tucked in at 
the neck of their salopi, or sleeved fur-coats, prowl in search of bar- 
gains. Here sit the fishermen from the distant Miuman coast, from 
Aikhangel, with weather-beaten but intelligent faces, in their quaint 
skull-caps of reindeer hide, and baggy, shapeless garments of mys- 
terious skins, presiding over the wares which they have risked their 
lives to catch in the stormy Arctic seas, during the long days of the 
brief summer-time ; codfish dried and cm-led into gray unrecoguiz- 



230 The Nevsky Prospekt 

ableness ; yellow caviar which resists the teeth like tiny balls of 
gutta-percha — not the delicious gray " pearl " caviar of the sturgeon 
— and other marine food which is never seen on the rich man's 
table. 

But we must return to the Nevsky Prospekt. Nestling at the 
foot of the City Hall, at the entrance of the broad street between it 
and the Gostinny Dvor, on the Nevsky, stands a tiny chapel, which 
is as thriving as the bazaar, in its own way, and as striking a com- 
pendium of some features in Russian architecture and life. Outside 
hangs a large image of the " Saviour-not-made-with-hands " — the 
Russian name for the sacred imprint on St. Veronica's handker- 
chief — which is the most popular of all the representations of 
Christ in ikons. Before it burns the usual "unquenchable-lamp," 
filled with the obligatory pure olive-oil. Beneath it stands a table 
bearing a large bowl of consecrated water. On hot summer days the 
thirsty wayfarer takes a sip, using the ancient Russian bush, or 
short-handled ladle, which lies beside it, crosses himself, and drops 
a small offering on the dish piled with copper coins near by, making 
change for himself if he has not the exact sum which he wishes to 
give. 

Inside, many ikons decorate the walls. The pale flames of their 
shrine-lamps is supplemented by masses of candles in the lrage 
standing candlesticks of silver. A black-robed monk from the mon- 
astery is engaged, almost without cessation, in intoning prayers of 
various sorts, before one or another of the images. The little chapel 
is thronged ; there is barely room for respectfully flourished crosses, 
such as the peasant loves, often only for the more circuniscribed 
sign current among the upper classes, and none at all for the favorite 
" ground reverences." The approach to the door is lined with two 
files of monks and nuns : monks in high Mobuks, like rimless chim- 
ney-pot hats, draped with black w r oollen veils, which are always be- 
coming ; tcJiernitzi, or lay sisters, from distant convents, in similar 
head-gear, in caps flat or pointed like the small end of a watermelon, 



The Nevsky Prospekt 231 

and with ears protected by black woollen shawls ungracefully 
pinned. Serviceable man's boots do more than peep out from be- 
neath the short, rusty-black skirts. Each monk and nun holds a 
small pad of threadbare black velvet, whereon a cross of tarnished 
gold braid, and a stray copper or two, by way of bait, explain the 
eleemosynary significance of the bearers' " broad " crosses, dizzy 
"reverences to the girdle," and muttered entreaty, of which we 
catch only : " Khristi Rddi — " for Christ's sake. 

People of all classes turn in here for a moment of prayer, to 
" place a candle " to some saint, for the health, in body or soul, of 
friend or relative : the workman, his tools on his back in a coarse 
lineu kit ; the bearded muzhik from the country, clad in his sheep- 
skin fuhip, wool inward, the soiled yellow leather outside set off by 
a gay sash ; ladies, officers, civilians — the stream never ceases. 

The only striking feature about the next building of importance, 
the Gradshdya Duma, or City Hall, is the lofty tower upon whose 
balcony, high in air, guards pace incessantly on the watch for fires. 
By day, they telegraph the locality of disaster to the fire depart- 
ment by means of black balls and white boards, in fixed combina- 
tions ; by night, with colored lanterns. Each section of the city has 
a signal-tower of this sort, and the engine-house is close at hand. 
Gradskaya Duma means literally, city thought, and the profundity 
of the meditations sometimes indulged in in this building, other- 
wise not remarkable, may be inferred from the fact discovered a 
few years ago, that many honored members of the Duma (which also 
signifies the Council of City Fathers) whose name still stood on the 
roll, were dead, though they continued to vote and exercise their 
other civic functions with exemplary regularity ! 

Naturally, in a city which lies on a level with the southern point 
of Greenland, the most characteristic season to select for our 
observations of the life is winter. 

The Prospekt wakes late. It has been up nearly all night, and 
there is but little inducement to early rising when the sun itself 



232 



The Nevsky Prospekt 



sets such a fashion as nine o'clock for its appearance on the hori- 
zon, like a pewter disk, with a well-defined hard rim, when he 
makes his appearance at all. If we take the Prospekt at different 
hours, we may gain a fairly comprehensive view of many Kussian 
ways and people, cosmopolitan as the city is. 




THE RESTAUKANT DOMINIQUE. 



At half-past seven in the morning, the horse-cars, which have 
been resting since ten o'clock in the evening, make a start, running 
always in groups of three, stopping only at turnouts. The dvornihs 
retire from the entrance to the court-yards, where they have been 
sleeping all night with one eye open, wrapped in then- sheepskin 
coats, a few shabby izvostcliiks make their appearance somewhat 
later, in company with small school-boys, in their soldierly uni- 
forms, knapsacks of books on back, and convoyed by servants. 



The Nevsky Prospekt 



233 



Earliest of all are the closed carriages of officials, evidently the 
most lofty in grade, since it was decided, two or three years ago, by 
one of this class, that his subordinates could not reasonably be ex- 
pected to arrive at business before ten or eleven o'clock after they 
had sat up until daylight over their indispensable club vint — which 
is Russian whist. 

Boots [muzhiks] in scarlet cotton blouses, and full trousers of 
black velveteen, txicked into tall, wrinkled boots, dart about to 
bakery and dairy shop, preparing for their masters' morning "tea." 
Venders of newspapers congregate at certain spots, and charge for 
their wares in inverse ratio to the experience of their customers ; 
for regular subscribers receive their papers through the post-office, 
and, if we are in such unseemly haste as to care for the news be- 
fore the ten o'clock delivery — or the eleven o'clock, if the postman 
has not found it convenient otherwise — we must buy on the street, 
though we live but half a block from the newspaper office, which 
opens at ten. By noon, everyone is awake. The restaurants are 
full of breakfasters, and Dominique's, which chances to stand on 
the most crowded stretch of the street, on the sunny north side be- 
loved of promenaders, is dense with officers, cigarette smoke, and 
characteristic national viands judiciously mingled with those of 
foreign lands. 

Mass is over, and a funeral passes down the Nevsky Prospekt, 
on its way to the fashionable Alexander Nevsky monastery or 
Novo-Dyevitche convent cemeteries. The deceased may have been 
a minister of state, or a great officer of the Court, or a military 
man who is accompanied by warlike pageant. The choir chants a 
dirge. The priests, clad in vestments of black velvet and silver, 
seem to find their long, thick hair sufficient protection to their 
bare heads. The professional mutes, with their silver-trimmed 
black baldrics and cocked hats, appear to have plucked up the 
street lanterns by their roots to serve as candles, out of respect to 
the deceased's greatness, and to illustrate how the city has been 



234 The Nevskv Prospekt 

cast into darkness by the withdrawal of the light of his counte- 
nance. The dead man's orders and decorations are borne, in im- 
posing state, on velvet cushions, before the gorgeous funeral car, 
where the pall, of cloth of gold, which will be made into a priest's 
vestment once the funeral is over, droops low among artistic 
wreaths and palms, of natural flowers, or beautifully executed in 
silver. Behind come the mourners on foot, a few women, many 
men, a Grand Duke or two among them, it may be ; the carriages 
follow ; the devout of the lower classes, catching sight of the train, 
cross themselves broadly, mutter a prayer, and find time to turn 
from their own affairs and follow for a little way, out of respect to 
the stranger corpse. More touching are the funerals which pass up 
the Prospekt on their way to the unfashionable cemetery across the 
Neva, on Vasily Ostroff ; a tiny pink coffin resting on the knees of 
the bereaved parents in a sledge, or borne by a couple of bare- 
headed men, with one or two mourners walking slowly behind. 

From noon onward, the scene on the Prospekt increases con- 
stantly in vivacity. The sidewalks are crowded, especially on Sun- 
days and holidays, with a dense and varied throng, of so many na- 
tionalties and types that it is a valuable lesson in ethnography to 
sort them, and that a secret uttered is absolutely safe in no tongue 
— unless, possibly, it be that of Patagonia. But the universal lan- 
guage of the eye conquers all difficulties, even for the remarkably 
fair Tatar women, whose national garb includes only the baldest 
and gauziest apology for the obligatory veil. 

The plain facades of the older buildings on this part of the 
Prospekt, which are but three or four stories in height — elevators 
are rare luxuries in Petersburg, and few buildings exceed five 
stories — are adorned, here and there, with gayly colored pictorial 
representations of the wares for sale within. But little variety in 
architecture is furnished by the inconspicuous Armenian, and the 
uncharacteristic Dutch Reformed and Lutheran churches which 
break the severe line of this "Tolerance Street," as it has been 



The Nevsky Prospekt 235 

called. Most fascinating of all the shops are those of the furriers 
and goldsmiths, with their surprises and fresh lessons for forei°Ti- 
ers; the treasures of Caucasian and Asian art in the Eastern 
bazaars ; the " Colonial-wares " establishments, with their delicious 
game cheeses, and odd studend [fishes in jelly], their pineapples at 
five and ten dollars, their tiny oysters from the Black Sea, at twelve 
and a half cents apiece. 

Enthralling as are the shop windows, the crowd on the side- 
walk is more enthralling still. There are Kazaks, dragoons, cadets 
of the military schools, students, so varied, though their gay uni- 
forms are hidden by their coats, that their heads resemble a bed of 
verbenas in the sun. There are officers of every sort : officers with 
rough gray overcoats and round lambskin caps ; officers in large, 
flat-peaked caps, and smooth-surfaced voluminous cape-coats, 
wadded with eiderdown and liued with gray silk, which trail on 
their spurs, and with collars of costly beaver or striped American 
raccoon, and long sleeves forever dangling unused. A snippet of 
orange and black ribbon worn in the buttonhole shows us that the 
wearer owns the much-coveted military order of St. George. There 
are civilians in black cape-coats of the military pattern, topped 
off with cold, uncomfortable, but fashionable chimney-pot hats, or, 
more sensibly, with high caps of beaver. 

It is curious to observe how many opinions exist as to the 
weather. The officers leave their ears unprotected ; a passing 
troop of soldiers — fine, large, hardy fellows — wear the strip of 
black woollen over their ears, but leave their bashlvks hanging, un- 
used, on their backs, with tabs tucked neatly under shoulder-straps 
and belts, for use on the Balkans or some other really cold spot. 
Most of the ladies, on foot or in sledges, wear bashlvks or Oren- 
burg shawls, over wadded fur caps, well pulled down to the brows. 
We may be sure that the pretty woman who trusts to her bonnet 
only has also neglected to put on the necessary warm galoshes, and 
that when she reaches home, sympathizing friends will rub her vain 



236 



The Nevsky Prospekt 



little ears, feet, and brow with spirits of wine, to rescue her from 
the results of her folly. Only officers and soldiers possess the se- 
cret of going about in simple leather boots, or protected merely 




BELOW ZERO— A FIRE IN THE SNOW. 



by a pair of stiff, slapping leather galoshes, accommodated to the 
spurs. 

For some mysterious reason, the picturesque nurses, with their 
pearl-embroidered, diadem-shaped caps, like the koMslmiks of the 
Empress and Court ladies, their silver-trimmed petticoats and jack- 



The Nevskv Prospekt 237 

ets, patterned after the ancient Russian " soul-warmers," and made 
of pink or blue cashmere, never have any children in their charge 
in winter. Indeed, if we were to go by the evidence offered by the 
Nevsky Prospekt, especially in cold weather, we shoidcl assert that 
there are no children in the city, and that the nurses are used as 
"sheep-dogs" by ladies long past the dangerous bloom of youth 
and beauty. 

The more fashionable people are driving, however, and that por- 
tion of the one hundred and fourteen feet of the Prospekt's width 
which is devoted to the roadway is, if possible, even more varied 
and entertaining in its kaleidoscopic features than the sidewalks. 
It is admirably kept at all seasons. With the exception of the 
cobblestone roadbed for the tramway in the centre, it is laid with 
hexagonal wooden blocks, well spiked together and tarred, resting 
upon tarred beams and planks, and forming a pavement which is 
both elastic and fairly resistant to the volcanic action of the frost. 
The snow is maintained at such a level that, while sledging is per- 
fect, the closed carriages which are used for evening entertainments, 
calls, and shopping are never incommoded. Street-sweepers, in red 
cotton blouses and clean white linen aprons, sweep on calmly in the 
icy chill. The police, with their bashlyks wrapped round their 
heads in a manner peculiar to themselves, stand always in the 
middle of the street and regulate the traffic. 

We will hire an izvdstcldk and join the throng. The process is 
simple ; it consists in setting ourselves up at auction on the curb- 
stone, among the numerous cabbies waiting for a job, and knocking 
ourselves down to the lowest bidder. If our Vanka (Johnny, the 
generic name for cabby) drives too slowly, obviously with the 
object of loitering away our money, a policeman will give him a 
hint to whip up, or we may effect the desired result by threaten- 
ing to speak to the next guardian of the peace. If Vanka attempts 
to intrude upon the privileges of the private carriages, for whom 
is reserved the space next the tramway track and the row of 



238 The Nevsky Prospikt 

high, silvered posts which bear aloft the electric lights, a sharp 
" Bcregis ! " [Look out for yourself !] will be heard from the first 
fashionable coachman who is impeded in his swift career, and he 
will be called to order promptly by the police. Ladies may not, 
unfortunately, drive in the smartest of the public carriages, but 
must content themselves with something more modest and more 
shabby. But Vanka is usxially good-natured, patient, and quite un- 
conscious of his •skabbiness, at least in the light of a grievance or as 
affecting his dignity. It was one of these shabby, but democratic 
and self-possessed, fellows who furnished us with a fine illustration 
of the peasant qualities. We encountered one of the Emperor's 
cousins on his way to his regimental barracks ; the Grand Duke 
mistook us for acquaintances, and saluted. Our izvostchik returned 
the greeting. 

" Was that Vasily Dmitrich ? " we asked, in Russian form. 

" Yes, madam." 

" Whom was he saluting '? " 

" Us," replied the man, with imperturbable gravity 

Very different from our poor fellow, who remembers his duties 
to the saints and clmrches, and salutes Kazan Cathedral as we pass, 
with cross and bared head, is the fashionable coachman, who sees 
nothing but his horses. Our man's cylindrical cap of imitation fin- 
is old, his summer armyak of blue cloth fits, as best it may, over 
his lean form and his sheepskin tulup, and is girt with a cheap 
cotton sash. 

The head of the fashionable coachman is crowned with a becom- 
ing gold-laced cap, in the shape of the ace of diamonds, well stuffed 
with down, and made of scarlet, sky-bhre, sea-green, or other hue of 
velvet. His fur-lined armyak reaching to his feet, through whose 
silver buttons, under the left arm, he is bursting with fashion or 
good living, is secured about his portly waist by a silken girdle 
glowing with roses and butterflies. His legs are too fat to enter 
the sledge — that is to say, if his master truly respects his own 



240 The Nevsky Prospekt 

dignity — and his feet are accommodated in iron stirrups outside. 
He leans well back, with arms outstretched to accord with the 
racing speed at which he drives. In the tiny sledge— the smaller it 
is, the more stylish, in inverse ratio to the coachman, who is ex- 
pected to be as broad as it is — sits a lady hugging her crimson 
velvet tsidiba lined with curled white Thibetan goat, or feathery 
black fox fur, close about her ears. An officer holds her firmly with 
one arm around the waist, a very necessary precaution at all sea- 
sons, with the fast driving, where drozhkies and sledges are utterly 
devoid of back or side rail. The spans of huge Orloff stallions, 
black or dappled gray, display their full beauty of form in the 
harnesses of slender straps and silver chains ; their beautiful eyes 
are unconcealed by blinders. They are covered with a coarse- 
meshed woollen net fastened to the winged dash-board, black, crim- 
son, purple, or blue, which trails in the snow in company with their 
tails and the heavy tassels of the fur-edged cloth robe. The horses, 
the wide-spreading reddish beard of the coachman, parted in the 
middle like a well-worn whisk-broom, the hair, eyelashes, and furs 
of the occupants of the sledge, all are frosted with rime until each 
filament seems to have been turned into silver wire. 

There is an alarm of fire somewhere. A section of the fire 
department passes, that imposing but amusing procession of hand- 
engine, three water-barrels, pennons and fine horses trained in the 
haute ecole, which does splendid work with apparently inadequate 
means. An officer in gray lambskin cap flashes by, drawn by a 
pair of fine trotters. " Vat on sam ! " mutters our izvostchik — 
" There he is himself ! " It is General Gresser,* the Prefect of the 
Capital, who maintains jjerfect order, and demonstrates the possi- 
bilities of keeping streets always clean in an impossible climate. 
The pounding of those huge trotters' hoofs is so absolutely distinc- 
tive — as distinctive as the unique gray cap — that we can recognize it 

* Since the above was written this able officer and very efficient Prefect has 
died. 



The Nevsky Prospekt 241 

as they pass, cry like the izvostchik : " J'ot on sam ! " and fly to 
the window with the certainty that it will be "he himself." 

Court carriages with lackeys in crimson and gold, ambassadors' 
sledges with cock-plumed chasseurs and cockaded coachmen, the 
latter wearing their chevrons on their backs ; rude wooden sledges, 
whose sides are made of knotted ropes, filled with superfluous 
snow ; Grand Ducal troikas with clinking harnesses studded with 
metal plaques and flying tassels, the outer horses coquetting, as 
usual, beside the staid trot of the shaft-horse, all mingle in the 
endless procession which flows on rip the Nevsky Prospekt through 
the Bolshaya Morskaya— Great Sea Street — and ont upon the Neva 
qua}'s, and back again, to see and lie seen, until long after the sun 
has set on the short days, at six minutes to three. A plain sledge 
approaches. The officer who occupies it is dressed like an ordinary 
general, and there are thousands of generals! As he drives quietly 
along, police and sentries give him the salute of the ordinary 
general ; so do those who recognize him by his face or his Kazak 
orderly. It is the Emperor out for his afternoon exercise. If we 
meet him near the gate < >f the Auitchkoff Palace, we may find him 
sitting placidly beside us, while our sledge and other sledges in the 
line are stopped for a moment to allow him to enter. 

Here is another sledge, also differing in no respect from the 
equipages of other people, save that the lackey on the low knife- 
board behind wears a peculiar livery of dark green, pale blue, and 
gold (or with white ill place of the green at Easter-tide). The 
lady whose large, dark eyes are visible between her sable cap and 
the superb black fox shawl of her crimson A T elvet cloak, is the Em- 
press. The lady beside her is one of her ladies-in-waiting. At- 
tendants, guards, are absolutely lacking, as in the case of the Em- 
peror. 

Here, indeed, is the place to enjoy winter. The dry, feathery 
snow descends, but no one heeds it. We turn up our coat collars 
and drive on. Umbrellas are unknown abominations. The perma- 



242 



The Nevsky Prospekt 



nent marquises, of light iron-work, which are attached to most of 
the entrances are serviceable only to those who use closed car- 
riages, and in the rainy autumn. 

Just opposite the centre of this thronged promenade, well set 
back from the street, stands the Cathedral of the Kazan Virgin. 
Outside, ou the quay of the tortuous Katherine Canal, made a 



7 isMSSS^' 




m 




^Sk 






THE KATHERINE CANAL. 



navigable water-way under the second Katherine, but lacking, 
through its narrowness, the picturesque features of the Fontanka, 
flocks of pigeons are fed daily from the adjoining grain shops. In 
the curve of the great colonnade, copied, like the exterior of the 
church itself, from that of St. Peter at Rome, bronze statues, heroic 
in size, of Generals Kutiizoff and Barclay de Tolly, by the Russian 
sculptor Orlovsky, stand on guard. 

Hither the Emperor and Empress come " to salute the Virgin," 



The Nevsky Prospekt 243 

on their safe return from a journey. Hither are brought Imperial 
brides in gorgeous state procession — when they are of the Greek 
faith — on their way to the altar in the AVinter Palace. We can 
never step into this temple without finding some deeply interesting 
and characteristically Russian event in progress. After we have 
run the inevitable gauntlet of monks, nuns, and other beggars at 
the entrance, we may happen upon a baptism, just beyond, the 
naked, new-born infant sputtering gently after his thrice-repeated 
dip in the candle-decked font, with the priest's hand covering his 
eyes, ears, mouth, and nostrils, and now undergoing the ceremony 
of anointment, or confirmation. Or we may come upon a bridal 
couple, in front of the solid silver balustrade ; or the exquisite 
liturgv, exquisitely chanted, by the fine choir in their vestments 
of scarlet, blue, and silver, with the seraphic wings upon their 
shoulders, and intoned, with a finish of art unknown in other lands, 
by priests robed in rich brocade. Or it may be that a popular 
sermon by a well-known orator has attracted a throng of listeners 
among the lofty pillars of gray Finland granite, hung with battle- 
flags and the keys of conquered towns. What we shall assuredly 
find is, votaries ascending the steps to salute with devotion the be- 
nignant, brown-faced Byzantine Virgin and Christ-Child, encrusted 
with superb jewels, or kneeling in "ground reverences " with brow 
laid to the marble pavement, before the ikonostds, or rood-screen, of 
solid silver. Our Lady of Kazan has been the most popular of 
wonder-working Virgins ever since she was brought from Kazan to 
Moscow, in 1579, and transported to Petersburg, in 1721 (although 
her present cathedral dates only from 1811), and the scene here on 
Easter-night is second only to that at St. Isaac's when the porticos 
are thronged by the lower classes waiting to have their flower- and 
candle-decked cakes and cream blessed at the close of the Easter 
matins. 

One of the few individual dwelling-houses which linger on the 
Nevsky Prospekt, and which presents us with a fine specimen of 



244 The Nevsky Prospe'kt 

the rococo style which Rastrelli so persistently served up at the 
close of the eighteenth century, is that of the Counts Stroganofl', at 
the lower qimy of the Moika. The Moika [literally, Washing] 
River is the last of the semicircular, concentric canals which inter- 
sect the Nevsky and its two radiating companion Prospekts, and 
impart to that portion of the city which is situated on the (compar- 
ative) mainland a resemblance to an outspread fan, whose palm- 
piece is formed by the Admiralty on the Neva cpiay. 

The stately pile, and the pompous air of the big, gold-laced 
Swiss lounging at the entrance on the Nevsky, remind us that the 
Stroganoff family has been a power in Russian history since the 
middle of the sixteenth century. 

It was a mere handful of their Kazaks, led by Yermak Timofee- 
vitch, who conquered Siberia, in 1581, under Ivan the Terrible, 
while engaged in repelling the incursions of the Tatars and wild 
Siberian tribes on the fortified towns which the Stroganoffs had 
been authorized to erect on the vast territory at the western foot of 
the Ural Mountains, conveyed to them by the ancient Tzars. Later 
on, when Alexei Mikhailovitch, the father of Peter the Great, estab- 
lished a new code, grading punishments and fines by classes, the 
highest money tax assessed for insult and injury was fifty rubles ; 
but the Stroganoffs were empowered to exact one hundred rubles. 

Opposite the Stroganoff house, on the upper Moika qua}*, rises 
the large, reddish-yellow Club of the Nobility, representing still 
another fashion in architecture, which was very popular during the 
last century for palaces and grand mansions — the Corinthian peri- 
style upon a solid, lofty basement. It is not an old building, but 
was probably copied from the palace of the Empress Elizabeth, 
which stood on this spot. Elizaveta Petrovna, though she used 
this palace a great deal, had a habit of sleeping in a different place 
each night, the precise spot being never known beforehand. This 
practice is attributed, by some Russian historians, to her custom of 
turning night into day. She went to the theatre, for example, at 



The Nevsky Prospekt 245 

eleven o'clock, and any courtier who failed to attend her was fined 
fifty rubles. It was here that the populace assembled to hurrah for 
Elizaveta Petrovna, on December 6, 1741, when she returned, with 
little Ivan VI. in her arms, frora the Winter Palace, where she had 
made captive his father and his mother, the regent Anna Leopold- 
ina. It may have been the recollection of the ease with which she 
had surprised indolent Anna Leopoldina in her bed-chamber which 
caused her to be so uncertain in her own movements, in view of the 
fact that there were persons so ill-advised as to wish the restoration 
of the slothful German regent and her infant son, disastrous as that 
would have been to the country.* 

Later on, the chief of police lived here, and the adjoining bridge, 
which had hitherto been known as the Green Bridge, had its name 
changed to the Police Bridge, which rather puzzling appellation it 
still bears. 

A couple of blocks beyond this corner of the Nevsky, the Moika 
and the Grand Morskaya, the Nevsky Prospekt ends at the Alex- 
ander Garden, backed by the Admiralty, and the Neva, after having 
passed in its course through all grades of society, from the monks 
at the extreme limit, peasant huts — or something very like them, 
on the outskirts — artistic and literary circles in the Peski quarter 
(the Sands), well-to-do merchants and nobles, officials and wealthy 
courtiers, until now we have reached the culminating point, where 

*We must do the Russians who occupy the building at the present day the jus- 
tice to state that they uphold religiously the nocturnal tradition thus established by 
Elizaveta Petrovna, and even improve upon it. From six o'clock in the evening on- 
ward, the long windows of the Club, on the bel eiagc, blaze with light. The oc- 
casional temporary obscurations produced by the steam from relays of samovars do 
not interfere materially with the neighbors' view of the card-parties and the final ex- 
change of big bundles of bank-bills which takes place at five o'clock the next morn- 
ing, or later. Even if players and bills were duly shielded from observation, the 
maunais quart d'heurc would be accurately revealed by the sudden rush for the 
sledges, which have been hanging, in a swarm, about the door, according to the usual 
convenient custom of Vanka, wherever lighted windows suggest possible patrons. 
Poor, hard-worked Vanka slumbers all night on his box, with one eye open, or falls 
prone in death-like exhaustion over the dash-board, upon his sleeping horse, while 
his cap lies on the suow, and his shaggy head is bared to the bitter blasts. 



246 The Nevsky Prospekt 

the Admiralty, Imperial Palace, and War Office complete the na- 
tional group begun at the church. 

"When, in 1704, Peter the Great founded his beloved Admiralty, 
as the first building on the mainland then designed for such pur- 
poses as this, and not for residence, it was simply a ship-yard, open 
to the Neva, and inclosed on three sides by low wooden struct- 
ures, surrounded by stone-faced earthworks, moats, and palisades. 
Hither Peter was wont to come of a morning, after having routed 
his ministers out of bed to hold Privy Council, at three and four 
o'clock, to superintend the work, and to lend a hand himself. The 
first stone buildings were erected in 1726, after his death. In the 
early years of the present century Alexander I. rebuilt this stately 
and graceful edifice, after the plans of the Russian architect, Zakha- 
roff, who created the beautiful tower adorned with Russian scidpt- 
ures, crowned by a golden spire, in the centre of the immense 
facade, fourteen hundred feet long, which forms a feature insepar- 
able from the vista of the Prospekt for the greater part of its length, 
to the turn at the Zniimenskaya Square. On this spire, at the 
present day, flags and lanterns warn the inhabitants of low-lying 
districts in the capital of the rate at which the water is rising 
during inundations. In case of serious danger the flags are rein- 
forced by signal guns from the fortress. But in Peter I. 's day these 
flags and guns bore exactly the opposite meaning to the unhappy 
nobles whom the energetic Emperor was trying to train into rough- 
weather sailors. To their trembling imaginations these signal 
orders to assemble for a practice sail signified, " Come out and be 
drowned ! " since they were obliged to embark in the crafts too 
generously given to them by Peter, and cruise about until their 
leader (who delighted in a storm) saw fit to return. There is a 
story of one unhappy wight, who was honored by the presence 
aboard of his craft of a very distinguished and very sea-sick Per- 
sian, making his first acquaintance with the pleasures of yachting, 
and who spent three days, without food, tacking between Petersburg 



The Ne'vsky Prospekt 



247 



and Kronstadt, iu the vain endeavor to effect a landing during rough 
weather. 

When the present Admiralty was built, a broad and shady bou- 
levard was organized on the site of the old glacis and covered way, 
and later still, when the break in the quay 
was filled in, and the shipbuilding trans- 
ferred to the New Admiralty a little farther 



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SLEDGE-ROAD ON THK FROZEN NEVA. 



down the river, the boulevard was enlarged into the New Alexander 
Garden, one of the finest squares in Europe. It soon became the 
fashionable promenade, and the centre of popular life as well, by vir- 
tue of the merry-makings which here took place. Here, during the 
Carnival of 1836, the temporary cheap theatre of boards was burned, 
at the cost of one hundred and twenty-six lives, and many injured 
persons, which resulted in these dangerous balagdni and other 
holiday amusements being removed to the spacious parade-ground 
known as the Empress's Meadow. 



24S The Ne'vsky Prospekt 

If we pass round the Admiralty to the Neva, we shall find its 
frozen surface teeming with life. Sledge roads have been laid out 
on it, marked with evergreen bushes, over which a yamtschik will 
drive us with his troika, fleet as the wind, to Kronstadt, twenty 
miles away. Plank walks, fringed with street lanterns, have been 
prepared for pedestrians. Broad ice-paths have been cleared, 
whereon the winter ferry-boats ply — green garden-chairs, holding 
one or more persons, furnished with warm lap-robes, and propelled 
by stout muzhiks on skates, who will transport us from shore to 
shore for the absurdly small sum of less than a cent apiece, though 
a ride with a reindeer (now a strange sight in the capital), at the 
Laplander's encampment, costs much more. 

It is hard to tear ourselves from the charms of the river, with its 
fishing, ice-cutting, and many other interesting sights always in 
progress. But of all the scenes that which we may witness on 
Epiphany Day — the " Jordan " or Blessing of the Waters, in com- 
memoration of Christ's baptism in the Jordan — is the most curious 
and typically Prussian. 

After mass, celebrated by the Metropolitan, in the Cathedral of 
the Winter Palace, whose enormous reddish-ochre mass we perceive 
rising above the frost-jewelled trees of the Alexander Garden, to 
our right as we stand at the head of the Nevsky Prospekt, the 
Emperor, his heir, his brothers, uncles, and other great personages, 
emerge in procession upon the quay. Opposite the Jordan door of 
the palace a scarlet, gold, and blue pavilion, also called the " Jor- 
dan," has been erected over the ice. Thither the procession moves, 
headed by the Metropolitan and the richly vestured clergy, their 
mitres gleaming with gems, bearing crosses and church banners, 
and the Imperial choir, clad in crimson and gold, chanting as they 
go. The Empress and her ladies, clad in full Com-t costume at 
mid-day, look on from the palace windows. After brief prayers in 
the pavilion, all standing with bared heads, the Metropolitan dips 
the great gold cross in the rushing waters of the Neva, through a 







THE EMPEROR OF RUSSIA BLESSING THE WATERS OF THE NEVA AT EPIPHAXT. 



The Nevsky Prospekt 251 

hole prepared in the thick, opalescent, green ice, and the guns on 
the opjaosite shore thunder out a salute. The pontoon Palace 
Bridge, the quays on both sides of the river, all the streets and 
squares for a long distance round about are densely thronged, and, 
as the guns announce the consecration, every head is bared, every 
right hand in the mass, thousands strong, is raised to execute re- 
peated signs of the cross on brow and breast. 

From our post at the head of the Prospekt we behold, not the 
ceremony itself but the framework of a great national picture, the 
great Palace Square, whereon twenty thousand troops can manoeuvre, 
and in whose centre rises the greatest monolith of modern times, 
the shaft of red Finland granite, eighty-four feet in height, crowned 
with a cross-bearing augel, the monument to Alexander I. There 
stand the Guards' Corps ; and the huge building of the General 
Staff, containing the Ministries of Finance and of Foreign Affairs, 
and many things besides, originally erected by Katherine II. to 
mask the rears of the houses at the end of the Nevsky, and rebuilt 
under Nicholas I., sweeping in a magnificent semicircle opposite the 
Winter Palace. Regiments restrain the zeal of the crowd to obtain 
the few posts of vantage from which the consecration of the waters 
is visible, and to keep open a lane for the carriages of royalty, diplo- 
mats, and invited guests. They form part of the pageant, like the 
Empress's cream-colored carriage and the white horses and scarlet 
liveries of the Metropolitan. The crowd is devout and silent, as 
Russian crowds always are, except when they see the Emperor after 
he has escaped a danger, when they become vociferous with an ani- 
mation which is far more significant than it is in more noisy lands. 
The ceremony over, the throngs melt away rapidly and silently ; 
pedestrians, Finnish ice-sledges, traffic in general, resume their 
rights on the palace sidewalks and the square, and after a state 
breakfast the Emperor drives quietly home, unguarded, to his 
Anitchkoff Palace. 

If we glance to our left, and slightly to our rear, as we stand thus 



252 The Nevsky Prospekt 

facing the Neva and the Admiralty, we see the Prefecture and the 
Ministry of War, the latter once the mansion of a grandee in the 
last century; and, rising above the latter, we catch a glimpse of 
the upper gallery and great gold-plated, un-Russian dome of St. 
Isaac's Cathedral, which is visible for twenty miles down the Gidf 
of Finland. The granite pillars glow in the frostj' air with the 
bloom of a Delaware grape. We forgive St. Isaac for the non-Pus- 
sian character of the modern ecclesiastical glories of which it is the 
exponent as we listen eagerly to the soft, rich, boom-boorn-bo-o-om 
of the great bourdon, embroidered with silvery melody by the mul- 
titude of smaller bells, chiming nearly all day long with a truly 
orthodox sweetness unknown to the Western world, and which, to- 
day, are more elaborately beautiful than usual, in honor of the great 
festival. We appreciate to the full the wailing cry of the prisoner, 
in the ancient epic songs of the land : " He was cut off from the 
light of the fair, red sun, from the sound of sweet church-bells." 

On the great Palace Square another characteristic sight is to be 
seen on the nights of Court balls, which follow the Jordan, when 
the blaze of electric light from the rock-crystal chandeliers, big as 
haystacks, within the state apartments, is supplemented by the 
fires in the heater and on the snow outside, round which the waiting 
coachmen warm themselves, with Eembrandtesque effects of cJiiaro- 
oscuro second only to the picturesqueness of dvornihs in their non- 
descript caps and shaggy coats, who cluster round blazing fagots in 
less aristocratic quarters when the thermometer descends below 
zero. 

When spring comes, with the magical suddenness which charac- 
terizes Northern lands, the gardens, quays, and the Nevsky Pros- 
jnekt still preserve their charms for a space, and are thronged far 
into the night with promenaders, who gaze at the Imperial crowns, 
stars, monograms, and other devices temporarily applied to the 
street lanterns, and the fairy flames on the low curb-posts (whereat 
no horse, though unblinded, ever shies), with which man attempts, 



The Nevsky Prospekt 253 

on the numerous royal festival days of early summer, to rival the 
illumination of the indescribably beautiful tints of river and sky. 
But the peasant-izvostchik goes off to the country to till his little 
patch of land, aided by the shaggy little farm-horse, which has been 
consorting on the Prospekt •with thoroughbred trotters all winter, 
and helping him to eke out his cash income, scanty at the best of 
times ; or he emigrates to a summer resort, scorning our insinuation 
that he is so unfashionable as to remain in town. The deserted 
Prospekt is torn up for repairs. The merchants, especially the 
goldsmiths, complain that it would be true economy for them to 
close their shops. The annual troops of foreign travellers arrive, 
view the lovely islands of the Neva delta, catch a glimpse of the 
summer cities in the vicinity, and dream, ah, vain dream ! that they 
have also really beheld the Nevsky Prospekt, the great avenue of 
the realm of the Frost King and the White Tzar ! 



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